Typical actinomycete colony morphology
Goodfellow Actinomycete collection
In his long career, Prof Goodfellow has been responsible for the isolation, classification, description and naming of more than one hundred new species of actinomycete. He and his co-workers have developed methods for isolation, enrichment, selection and dereplication of these fascinating organisms.
The Demuris collection was built up from the efforts of more than 100 graduate, post-graduate and post-doctoral scientists working under Goodfellow’s supervision over a 35 year period. It contains over 7,000 well characterized distinct bacterial strains, and is unparalleled in the diversity and quality of its content.
Unlike other collections, this one has been extensively "dereplicated", so that its diversity is equivalent to that of much larger strain collections. Screening is therefore greatly simplified, without compromising on likelihood of obtaining hits.
Demuris is preparing extracts from all of the strains, and samples of these have been configured ready for high throughput screening. The quality of the collection has already been amply validated by discovery of multiple novel antibiotic and antifungal activities. Collaborative or contract proposals to screen for other therapeutic targets (e.g. antivirals, anticancer, immunomodulatory, etc) are always of interest.
The collection is also ideal for screening projects looking for novel enzymes or speciality chemicals.
