Metabolic profiling as a tool for prioritizing antimicrobial compounds.

Area of Science:

• Analytical Chemistry
• Natural Product Discovery
• Microbiology

Background:

• Metabolomics enables global profiling of metabolites for biomarker identification.
• Identifying novel antimicrobial natural products is crucial for combating resistance.
• Microbial sources are rich reservoirs for potential therapeutic compounds.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR)- and Mass Spectrometry (MS)-based metabolomics for identifying novel antimicrobial natural products.
• To highlight strategies for eliciting and analyzing poorly expressed microbial compounds.
• To emphasize the importance of linking compounds to biosynthetic gene clusters.

Main Methods:

• Review of NMR- and MS-based metabolomics techniques.
• Discussion of strategies for eliciting cryptic metabolite production.
• Focus on NMR for dereplication and guided fractionation of antimicrobial compounds.

Main Results:

• NMR- and MS-based metabolomics are powerful tools for natural product discovery.
• Eliciting cryptic molecules enhances the identification of potential biomarkers.
• Connecting compounds to biosynthetic gene clusters aids in pathway elucidation.

Conclusions:

• Metabolomics, particularly NMR-based approaches, is vital for discovering novel antimicrobials from microbes.
• Targeted strategies for cryptic metabolite production and analysis are essential.
• Understanding biosynthetic pathways facilitates optimization and scale-up of natural product production.