Microbial genetics predict that the natural products we have discovered so far are only the tip of the iceberg, thus the antibiotics and biopesticides of the future may be still hidden in the huge biosynthetic potential of microorganisms.

In fact, many natural compounds remain invisible under standard laboratory conditions, but their biosynthesis can be triggered by re-establishing the structure of their native community in multi-microbial co-cultures. Thus, hidden natural products that enable microbes to communicate and compete with each other can be revealed. However, microbial inter-kingdom partnerships such as fungi-bacterial microbial interactions are still in general poorly explored.

The detection of cryptic natural products from microorganisms is a major challenge because many of them are produced in small quantities, in a specific area and during a short period of time. The emerging technology of Imaging Mass Spectrometry can be a great candidate to investigate multi-partner microbial interactions in their native ecological environment, and find the natural products involved in their cross-talk.

FUNBIT aims to speed up the rate of natural product discovery by integrating Imaging Mass Spectrometry with High Resolution Mass Spectrometry, spatial statistics and data mining techniques such as fragmentation trees and molecular network analysis. Our approach will contribute to achieve an alternative and more efficient workflow for the discovery of valuable natural products that still remain unknown.