where, BII has an in-house natural product discovery platform (NPDP) that provides expertise in biological high-throughput screening (HTS), genomics, analytical chemistry, natural product research, synthetic biology and bioinformatics to galvanize projects initiated by our partners. Library personnel are capable of carrying out a whole range of tasks, including the screening of the NOL to identify suitable organisms, compounds or genes, the characterization of metabolites, genes and enzymes, the discovery of protein targets of compounds and the omics characterization of organisms. To mine our collection, we generally use the following four approaches: first, conventional biological highthroughput screening (HTS); second chemical screening; third, genomic screening; and fourth, in silico screening (Fig. 1). We describe these approaches in more detail below.

Biological screening. Bioassay-guided compound isolation is accomplished through HTS of the extracts against biochemical/cellular assays to identify biological activities of interest. Once active extracts have been found, individual active molecules within them are purified using bioassayguided compound isolation. Although HTS is thought to be synonymous with the pharmaceutical and agrochemical sectors, most of our current industrial collaborators—and, monetarily, our largest projects—are in the food and consumer care space. To date, we have carried out about 200 screens each with testing 50,000–150,000 extracts and purified the respective active compounds. Screenings can be carried out over the whole collection as well as over selected subsections, such as plants, fungi or microbes. One can screen organisms from predefined habitats, such as edible plants, or instead examine herbs and fungi used in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). The plant samples are usage-annotated (traditional and modern uses for the individual plants and products derived thereof) and collated from several web-based plant-related databases. Despite missing scientific evidence to support certain claims, such information offers an opportunity to target certain plants for further investigation. Industries that are looking for new microbial strains to produce different applicationtailored enzymes may consider screening