Discovery and applications of nucleoside antibiotics beyond polyoxin

Nucleoside antibiotics possess various biological activities such as antibacterial, antifungal, anticancer, and herbicidal activities. RIKEN scientists contributed to this area of research with two representative antifungal nucleoside antibiotics, blasticidin S and polyoxin. Blasticidin S was the first antibiotic exploited in agriculture worldwide. Meanwhile, the polyoxins discovered by Isono and Suzuki are still used globally as an agricultural antibiotic. In this review article, the research on nucleoside antibiotics mainly done by Isono and his collaborators is summarized from the discovery of polyoxin to subsequent investigations.