Meet the Jury – Nadine Ziemert on From Metagenomes to Molecules

Arenberg Doctoral School is proud to invite you to Meet The Jury!

When internationally renowned experts visit KU Leuven as a member of a PhD Examination Committee, we like to seize this opportunity to give this expert a forum to a large audience. All members of Science, Engineering & Technology are most welcome to the Meet The Jury Lectures.

Prof. Nadine Ziemert (University of Tübingen, Germany) will give a lecture on “From Metagenomes to Molecules: Big-Data Strategies to Explore Biosynthetic Diversity”.

Microbial natural products are a rich source of structurally and functionally diverse biomolecules, yet only a fraction of their biosynthetic potential has been explored. Metagenomic sequencing offers direct access to this largely untapped chemical space, including biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) from microorganisms that are difficult or impossible to cultivate. Our recent ultra-deep sequencing of a single soil microbiome revealed 11,381 BGCs together with extensive previously undescribed taxonomic diversity, highlighting both the remarkable biosynthetic potential of environmental microbiomes and the enormous scale of the remaining search space. To navigate this complexity, we are developing scalable computational strategies for the detection, classification and prioritization of BGCs across genomes and metagenomes. These efforts include the BGC Atlas, which integrates millions of BGCs from diverse environments and provides a framework for exploring biosynthetic diversity on a global scale. By combining large-scale comparative genome mining with targeted prioritization, evolutionary analyses and experimental approaches such as heterologous expression, we aim to move from sequence space to molecules. I will discuss how these strategies can reveal previously inaccessible natural product diversity and help identify biosynthetic systems with the greatest potential for the discovery of new bioactive compounds.

Following the lecture, there will be opportunity for young researchers to interact with her.

• Venue: Aula Symbiosis (12.366), Leuven BioScience Centre, Celestijnenlaan 200R, 3001 Heverlee
• Date: 21 October 2026 – 10:00-11:00
• Prof. Nadine Ziemert is visiting KU Leuven on the occasion of the PhD defence of Sandrien De Smedt