Streptomyces, and related genera of Actinobacteria, are renowned for their ability to produce antibiotics and other bioactive natural products with a wide range of applications in medicine and agriculture. Streptomyces coelicolor A3(2) is a model organism that has been used for more than five decades to study the genetic and biochemical basis for the production of bioactive metabolites. In 2002, the complete genome sequence of S. coelicolor was published. This greatly accelerated progress in understanding the biosynthesis of metabolites known or suspected to be produced by S. coelicolor and revealed that streptomycetes have far greater potential to produce bioactive natural products than suggested by classical bioassay-guided isolation studies. In this article, efforts to exploit the S. coelicolor genome sequence for the discovery of novel natural products and biosynthetic pathways are summarized.