The development of Burkholderia bacteria as heterologous hosts

Covering up to 2024Drug resistance is a serious and growing problem, and new small molecules are needed for a wide variety of clinical and agricultural applications. Natural products, encoded by biosynthetic gene clusters, have consistently been a source of chemical diversity for finely tuned interactions with a range of molecular targets of interest. However, many gene clusters are not transcriptionally active, making heterologous expression in a different host strain a useful tool to access bioactive small molecules. Burkholderia spp. bacteria hold promise as heterologous hosts because of their intrinsic natural product capabilities. In this review, we summarize natural products successfully isolated from Burkholderia spp. heterologous hosts up until 2024. We then compare the hosts that have been tested and discuss ongoing development efforts to improve access to new natural products in titers sufficient for drug development and industrial applications.