SCREENING AND IDENTIFICATION OF POTENTIAL CYANOBACTERIAL CRUDE EXTRACTS/COMPOUNDS AGAINST HIGHLY INFECTIOUS POULTRY VIRUSES AND BACTERIA

Major goal of the proposed work is to screen and identify natural antiviral and antibacterial cyanobacterial crude extracts/purified compounds for prophylactic and therapeutic control of highly infectious poultry viruses and bacteria while gaining a fundamental understanding of their mechanisms of action and their broad-spectrum activity to enhance the ongoing research and education programs at Tennessee State University (TSU). This overarching goal will be accomplished through the following supporting objectives:In silico screening of cyanobacterial metabolite database for potential target antiviral and antibacterial compounds and predict their pharmacokinetics.Identification of top hit compounds and corresponding cyanobacterial strains, preparation of crude extracts, purified cyanobioactives and target viral receptors for in vitro studies; In vitro approaches to identify inhibitory effect against target receptors, antiviral activity of purified cyanobioactives and crude extracts; Assessment of antibacterial and immunomodulatory properties of purified cyanobioactives and crude extracts; TSU, NCATDevelop formal education and training programs at the graduate and undergraduate levels in food and animal science, natural antimicrobial design, virology, bacteriology, homology modeling, molecular docking/molecular dynamics simulations,recombinant DNA technology, analytical chemistry for under-represented minorities students and establishing a multidisciplinary, collaborative, and competitive STEM field knowledge-based society;