We were very pleased to invite two young international experts from Germany to give us the fascinating and inspiring online lectures on 17^th Sep., 2021. Dr. Yi-Ming Shi who works at Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology presented his research on investigating the ecological function of natural products produced by entomopathogenic bacteria (Xenorhabdus and Photorhabdus) in symbiotic relationship with their hosts (Steinernema and Heterorhabditis). Through global analysis of biosynthetic gene clusters, Dr. Shi and his collaborators have identified the core conserved and unique natural products in these bacteria and partially revealed their biological activities and relevant mechanisms. Professor Dr. Eric Helfrich from Goethe University Frankfurt gave his talk on” Eco-nomics: Ecology-inspired and genomics-assisted discovery of bioactive natural products. In his talk, he showed two examples on bioactivity and Multi-Omics -guided natural product discovery: the antifungal pyonitrin formed by two intermediates from different gene clusters and the biosynthesis of tryptorubin A, a compound from symbiosis system of fungi and streptomyces.

The work presented by two invited speakers shed great lights on our future research. When we try to screen novel compounds from natural resources for human use, we should have a broader perspective to think why microbes make the compounds in their ecosystems and when the compounds are produced. If we can always bear these two questions in mind, design and perform the experiments accordingly using state-of-art modern technologies, it will eventually help us to understand the nature and for sure to obtain more promising bioactive natural products for drug leads to benefit human beings.