Discovery of microbial natural products by activation of silent biosynthetic gene clusters

Peter J. Rutledge; Gregory L. Challis

doi:10.1038/nrmicro3496

Discovery of microbial natural products by activation of silent biosynthetic gene clusters

Peter J. Rutledge, Gregory L. Challis

Research output: Contribution to journal › Review Article › Research › peer-review

692 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Microorganisms produce a wealth of structurally diverse specialized metabolites with a remarkable range of biological activities and a wide variety of applications in medicine and agriculture, such as the treatment of infectious diseases and cancer, and the prevention of crop damage. Genomics has revealed that many microorganisms have far greater potential to produce specialized metabolites than was thought from classic bioactivity screens; however, realizing this potential has been hampered by the fact that many specialized metabolite biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) are not expressed in laboratory cultures. In this Review, we discuss the strategies that have been developed in bacteria and fungi to identify and induce the expression of such silent BGCs, and we briefly summarize methods for the isolation and structural characterization of their metabolic products.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	509-523
Number of pages	15
Journal	Nature Reviews Microbiology
Volume	13
Issue number	8
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro3496
Publication status	Published - 29 Jun 2015
Externally published	Yes

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10.1038/nrmicro3496

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Discovery of microbial natural products by activation of silent biosynthetic gene clusters

Abstract

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