Bioprospecting and production of bioactive molecules from European bryophytes

Liverworts, an ancient group of land plants, are a rich and yet still underexploited source of a wide range of biologically active compounds with high potential for the bioeconomy sector as ingredients of cosmetics/cosmeceuticals and pharmaceutics.

However, their slow growth rate in nature and the consequent difficulty to obtain large amounts of single compounds have until now severely hindered the in-depth exploration and exploitation of the full spectrum of activities of liverworts secondary metabolites.

Recent breakthroughs in the identification of some of the genes involved in the early steps of liverwort-specific compounds suggest that, in addition to the establishment of improved methods for growth in axenic conditions, reconstruction of liverwort metabolic pathways in heterologous systems is a promising way forth towards the practical exploitation of liverwort biochemical diversity and its industrial scale up.The BRYOMOLECULES project will use a combination of cultivation of axenic cultures and production of the active compounds in heterologous systems to define the most suitable production platform(s) for their large-scale production.

The project will achieve a very sustainable use of the chemical diversity of wild EU bryophyte species, a largely untapped source of high added-value natural products, without significant impacts on their biodiversity.Besides the identification of relevant lead compounds for cosmetics/cosmeceuticals and pharmaceutics , another major impact of the project will be the production and release according to FAIR principles of a database of metabolites and biosynthetic genes of European bryophyte species that will fuel in the years to come the development of novel bio-based products based on bryophyte-derived lead compounds, according to the concept of EU valorizing biodiversity for EU bioeconomy.