Renewed interests in the discovery of bioactive actinomycete metabolites driven by emerging technologies

Actinomycetes are prolific sources of bioactive molecules. Traditional workflows including bacterial isolation, fermentation, metabolite identification and structure elucidation have resulted in high rates of natural product rediscovery in recent years. Recent advancements in multi-omics techniques have uncovered cryptic gene clusters within the genomes of actinomycetes, potentially introducing vast resources for the investigation of bioactive molecules. While developments in culture techniques have allowed for the fermentation of difficult-to-culture actinomycetes, high-throughput metabolite screening has offered plenary tools to accelerate hits discovery. A variety of new bioactive molecules have been isolated from actinomycetes of unique environmental origins, such as endophytic and symbiotic actinomycetes. Synthetic biology and genome mining have also emerged as new frontiers for the discovery of bioactive molecules. This review covers the highlights of recent developments in actinomycete-derived natural product drug discovery.