Biodiscovery in Irish waters with Dr Ryan Young

With bioprospecting one of the scientific buzzwords of the last few years we’re delighted that Dr Ryan Young of NUI Galway will give a talk on biodiscovery in Irish waters and his work on the Science Foundation Ireland funded program “Exploiting and conserving deep-sea genetic resources”.

Dr Young gained his PhD in marine natural products chemistry from Rhodes University and is currently the senior postdoc on SFI Investigator Programme Award15/IA/3100 Exploiting and conserving deep-sea genetic resources, responsible for chemical and biological screening

The 5-year (2016-2021) Science Foundation Ireland Investigators programme project Exploiting and conserving deep-sea genetic resources focuses on biodiscovery research in Irish deep-sea Cnidaria and Porifera. The aims are to:

• find new bioactive natural products from deep-sea corals and sponges in Irish offshore waters
• develop informed bioprospecting approaches to maximise the chance of finding these compounds in hard to sample environments such as the deep sea
• inform conservation planning in relation to biodiscovery hotspots