Discovery of microbial natural products by activation of silent biosynthetic gene clusters
Peter J Rutledge1, Gregory L Challis2
1School of Chemistry, The University of Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia.
Abstract:
Microorganisms produce a wealth of structurally diverse specialized metabolites with a remarkable range of biological activities and a wide variety of applications in medicine and agriculture, such as the treatment of infectious diseases and cancer, and the prevention of crop damage. Genomics has revealed that many microorganisms have far greater potential to produce specialized metabolites than was thought from classic bioactivity screens; however, realizing this potential has been hampered by the fact that many specialized metabolite biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) are not expressed in laboratory cultures. In this Review, we discuss the strategies that have been developed in bacteria and fungi to identify and induce the expression of such silent BGCs, and we briefly summarize methods for the isolation and structural characterization of their metabolic products.
Related Concept Videos
Synthetic Biology
Golden rice
Golden rice is a genetically modified...
Biosynthesis in Bacteria
iChip
Production of Antibiotics
Microbial Biosensors
Gene Regulation in Microbial Communities: Quorum Sensing


