Metabolic engineering of Micromonospora for exploring useful natural products and phytobiotic interaction

Micromonospora, a genus within the Actinobacteria phylum, is recognized for its prolific production of bioactive secondary metabolites. It has important applications in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and agricultural fields. Micromonospora is renowned for generating antibiotics, anticancer agents, immunosuppressants, and plant growth-promoting compounds, making it a primary subject in natural product research. Advances in genome sequencing and mining technologies have revealed numerous biosynthetic gene clusters, many of which remain unexplored, underscoring their vast, untapped biosynthetic potential. This review presents an in-depth summary of the role of Micromonospora in the discovery of novel bioactive compounds and their biotechnological and industrial applications. Furthermore, we discuss the plant-microbe interactions of Micromonospora, consolidating current knowledge from its historical discovery to recent genomic insights, and outlines future research directions and challenges for optimizing the biotechnological potential of this promising yet underexploited microbial resource.