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Published on: July 25, 2017
Natural Products from Mammalian Gut Microbiota
Leli Wang1, Vinothkannan Ravichandran2, Yulong Yin3
1Laboratory of Animal Nutrition and Human Health, Hunan International Joint Laboratory of Animal Intestinal Ecology and Health, College of Life Science, Hunan Normal University, 410081, Changsha, China; These authors contributed equally to this work.
Abstract:
The mammalian gut has a remarkable abundance of microbes. These microbes have strong potential to biosynthesize distinct metabolites that are promising drugs, and many more bioactive compounds have yet to be explored as potential drug candidates. These small bioactive molecules often mediate important host-microbe and microbe-microbe interactions. In this review, we provide perspectives on and challenges associated with three mining strategies - culture-based, (meta)genomics-based, and metabolomics-based mining approaches - for discovering natural products derived from biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) in mammalian gut microbiota. In addition, we comprehensively summarize the structures, biological functions, and BGCs of these compounds. Improving these techniques, including by using combinatorial approaches, may accelerate drug discovery from gut microbes.
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