New paper: Meet the kineochelins!
Our new study, "Kineochelins—A New Group of Siderophores From an Antarctic Bacterium," has been published in Microbial Biotechnology.
We describe kineochelins, a previously unknown family of iron-binding metabolites produced by Actinokineospora sp. UV203, a rare actinomycete isolated from Antarctic soil on James Ross Island. By combining genome mining, transcriptomics, metabolomics, purification and structural analyses, we connected kineochelin production to a dedicated biosynthetic gene cluster and resolved the structures of representative compounds.
Kineochelins bind iron strongly and selectively, and their production is suppressed under iron-rich conditions. Their antimicrobial effects were likewise dependent on iron availability, supporting an ecological role in iron acquisition and microbial competition within nutrient-limited Antarctic soils.
The study highlights the value of polar microorganisms as sources of unexplored natural products and shows how ecological questions can guide microbial metabolite discovery. This study also marks an important personal transition. The project began during my MSCA fellowship at the Division of Microbial Ecology (DOME), University of Vienna, and was completed after establishing my own research group at the Faculty of Pharmacy, Masaryk University (PharmMUNI). It therefore represents both the outcome of an international research stay and one of the first natural-product studies brought to completion within our new group.
The full story is HERE!
Funding and acknowledgement:
- S.K. has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie SkłodowskaCurie grant agreement No. 101020356 (DEFCOMANT,https://doi.org/ 10.3030/101020356)
- S.K has reeived funding from MASH StG/CoG (MUNI/SC/1946/2024) by Masaryk University.
- The overall work happened thanks to support of the University of Vienna via the Research Platform Secondary Metabolomes of Bacterial Communities (MetaBac).
- Fieldwork was supported by the Czech Antarctic Research Programme 2025–2027 (VAN 2025).
- Sincere thanks to all colleagues contributing to this story :)