Back in 2020, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) announced the programme entitled “Establishing German-Ukrainian Excellence Centers (CoE) in Ukraine.” The goal is to support the formation of German-Ukrainian Research Centers in Ukraine. The establishment of such centers aspires to encourage and strengthen collaboration between Ukrainian and German Research Institutions and promote the integration of Ukrainian scientists into the European Scientific Community.

The PLOID project – “Planning, Organization and Initiation of New Anti-Infective Discovery Core of Excellence” is devoted to the discovery of novel bioactive natural products from diverse bacterial sources. Such a discovery platform will be based on collaboration between Explogen and Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HZI/HIPS, Germany). The project will deploy the novel methods of genomics and synthetic biology in order to reach for the chemical diversity encrypted in bacterial genomes. Additionally, it will create an excellent research environment for young Ukrainian Scientists willing to conduct their research in Ukraine.

PLOID is one of twelve competing projects selected for the second stage of the call. We hope that all Ukrainian participants of the call are safe and can work during these difficult times.

Despite the war, we continue our activities dedicated to PLOID. In July we held the first meeting of PLOID participants with Scientific Advisory Board members (Prof. Jozef Anne, Prof. Andreas Bechthold, Prof. Peter Leadlay) and potential stakeholders (BASF SE, PrJSC Enzym, YURiA-Pharm Corp). The general idea of the project, the details of the research plan and its outcomes as well as legal organization of the future center of excellence were discussed.

The next meeting will be held in either October or November 2022, in order to prepare the application for the second 48-month implementation stage of the call.

Metagenomics is a promising approach in describing the phylogenetic and functional diversity of the complex microbial community. EXG is now offering the metagenomic DNA isolation from different samples, whole metagenome and amplicon metagenomic sequencing accompanied by bioinformatic analysis.

Explogen developed the production strain and purification protocol for our own Taq DNA polymerase (thanks to our researcher Dmytro). The enzyme is of high purity and efficient in amplifying DNA fragments from diverse templates. The EXG-Taq is offered for a very attractive price. Be first to try it in your lab.

Explogen and German company MyBiotech have signed the cooperation agreement launching joint efforts in antibiotic discovery and development. MyBiotech has broad knowledge and expertise in biotechnological development and production of natural compounds, which covers all aspects of upstream and downstream processes. Explogen will provide the complementary expertise in metabolic engineering of microorganisms, development of activity-oriented screening approaches, cloning and manipulating large DNA fragments, genome sequencing and bioinformatics.  The agreement between Explogen and MyBiotech establishes the cooperative Platform that will facilitate new drug discovery and development and thus will contribute to addressing the global antibiotic resistance crisis. The main goal of such cooperation is to provide new chemical entities with well-established and optimized production process as potential candidates for further development into pharmaceutical leads.

Explogen has purified denatured and soluble forms of recombinant RBD of S1-protein of SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Explogen started a series of open topic seminars. We are aiming to make science entertaining and thus inviting interesting speakers to talk about serious topics in a simple and understandable way. Please join us at Facebook page for new announcements. https://www.facebook.com/Explogen-LLC-249335689379346

The EXG’s bioinformatician contributed to understanding of cross-coronaviral humoral immune response phenomenon. Dr. Rostyslav Bilyy and his team with EXG contribution have demonstrated that Coronaviruses possess conservative domains in S-protein and disease caused by one type of virus will probably result in cross-reactive pan-coronaviral antibodies production. The paper describing this finding was recently published at MedRXiv. 

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.20.20178566v1

For quite some time we were looking to isolate one of only a few known pathogenic to plant Streptomyces species – Streptomyces scabiei. Finally, by finding the scab-infected potato tubers on a local market we got 3 actinobacteria species, one of which was dominant. This strain, named Streptomyces ukrainascabiei EXG0031, is closely related, but still different from other known Streptomyces scabiei. However, unlike the related species, the S. ukrainascabiei is stimulating seeds germination and growth of radish sprouts. On the other hand, one of the minor isolates, Streptomyces sp. EXG0029 demonstrated a strong inhibition of radish germination. Now, with the genomics and metabolic analysis we are looking to find the factors causing this unusual behavior of both strains.

Explogen joins the common efforts in combating the COVID-19 pandemic. We purified SARS-CoV2 receptor binding domain of spike protein under denaturing conditions. The protein samples are compatible with the immunoassays such as ELISA and most importantly are suitable for vaccine development.

In cooperation with Ukrainian Speleological Association we have reached for the actinobacterial diversity of cave Zolushka (Emil Racoviță). First 10 samples brought us 36 new actinobacteria species, most of which are not Streptomyces. Their characterization will follow.