Biological and Medicinal Chemistry of Hericium and Chaga with Dr. Christine Salomon

This will be a hybrid In-person/Zoom meeting.  Attend in person on the U of M St. Paul campus or watch live with Zoom.
ATTENTION: Non-members cannot attend in person, only via Zoom until further notice!

The fruiting bodies and substrate mycelia of mushroom-forming fungi are ecologically and spatially distinct, with different environments, physical and biological stresses and needs for defense.  It is likely that these morphologically different growth forms differentially produce chemical compounds.  We have studied the chemistry and biological activities of extracts from the fruiting bodies of Hericium americanum (“Bear’s head tooth fungus”) as well as mycelial cultures on a wide variety of substrates.  We found that some of the most antimicrobial compounds were only found in the mycelia cultures under specific growth conditions.  We are conducting similar studies with the sclerotia (sterile conk) and mycelial cultures from Inonotus obliquus (“Chaga”).  The implications of how fungi are cultivated and chemically studied and tested will be discussed.

Dr. Christine Salomon is an associate professor at the Center for Drug Design (CDD) at the University of Minnesota.  Her research program is focused on the discovery of novel natural products from bacteria and fungi with useful biological activities. She has a special interest in screening for compounds with antifungal activity because of the increasing rate of drug resistance in opportunistic fungal pathogens (in humans, animals and agriculture) and lack of preclinical drugs in the pipeline. The lab also has several projects focused on developing biological control treatments for infectious disease in animals and plants.  Her lab collects source organisms from diverse locations globally, including plant endophytes, root rhizosphere, freshwater, marine, polar ice, caves and mines. The driving force that guides sample collections is to consider locations where species interactions might be especially important and how chemical signaling/antagonism in the environment shapes the evolution of biosynthetic pathways and their expression.

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