Kerr Marine Natural Products Lab

University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island
What the facility does

Discovery of novel natural products from a marine microbial library with applications in human and animal health and wellness

Areas of expertise

The Kerr Marine Natural Products Lab has state-of-the-art equipment to conduct natural-product discovery research. The research group is composed of over 20 researchers and has outstanding expertise in both natural products isolation/characterization and microbiology. The combination of two LC-HRMS instruments hyphenated with ELSD and PDA detectors provides our lab with strong capabilities for the analysis of natural-product extracts, the quantification of targeted metabolites in environmental samples and the study of microbial secondary metabolomes using LC-HRMS assisted by statistical analyses.

Research services

Isolation of natural products, structure elucidation, chemical analyses, including HRMS, cell and enzyme assays

Sectors of application
  • Chemical industries
  • Healthcare and social services
  • Life sciences, pharmaceuticals and medical equipment
  • Ocean industries

Equipment

Function

LC-HRMS-PDA-ELSD with an Exactive mass spectrometer (Thermo)

Chemical screening of natural products (NPs)

LC-HRMS-PDA with an LTQ-Velos (Thermo)

Quantification and identification of natural products (MSn)

LC-PDA-ELSD (Thermo)

Semi-preparative purification of NPs

LC-PDA-ELSD sample manager (Thermo)

Semi-preparative purification of NPs with automated fraction collection

GC-MS (Thermo)

Volatile compound analysis

Combiflash Rf200 (Teledyne)

Automated low-pressure purification

Evaporating systems: rotavap, Genevac

Drying samples

Polatrimeter Rudolph Autopol III

Optical rotation measurement

Shaking incubators, PCR units

Microbial fermentation

Biosafety cabinets

Microbial fermentation

Multi-mode plate reader

Bioassay

Freeze-dryer

Drying aqueous samples

  • Nautilus Biosciences
  • Croda
  • AB Vista
  • Cargill
  • Eisai
  • Dalhousie University
  • Ruhr University Bochum
  • Technical University of Munich