Virtual Indo-German “BioFun” kick-off meeting: “In silico design and experimental validation of bio-fungicides targeting chitin and chitosan biosynthesis for sustainable plant disease protection”

Today, the BMBF Bioeconomy International project “BioFun” started its international phase with the virtual Indo-German kick-off meeting. On the German side, Dr. Ratna Singh as the co-ordinator of the project, Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher, our research technician Christin Meier, our doctoral candidate Mounashree, and our Master candidate Naike Schwenner participated in the meeting. Our Indian partners are Prof. Rengarajan Balamurugan and Prof. Ramu Sridhar Perali, both from the School of Chemistry of our partner University of Hyderabad, and both former members of our Indo-German International Research Training Group IRTG on Molecular and Cellular Glyco-Sciences MCGS. Ratna gave an overview of the project and its goals, namely the in silico identification and in vitro verification of inhibitors for chitin synthases and chitin deacetylases as a basis for the development of novel functional fungicides. She then presented the pipeline she has developed for the in silico screening and initial validation of large online compound libraries. We also shared with our Indian colleagues the first lead structures we identified and the results of their in vitro testing for inhibitor activities. Together, we discussed possible improvements of these structures, based on their expected ability to bind to the active site of our target enzymes on the one hand, and their accessibility by chemical synthesis on the other hand. We came up with a few promising ideas, and the structures eventually suggested by our Indian colleagues will now be evaluated in silico by Ratna’s team. So far, the project is on track, and we hope and trust it will stay that way. With a little luck, we will soon test the first custom-synthesized first new inhibitors of chitin and chitosan biosynthesis!