Unearthing Hidden Chemical Potential from Discarded Actinobacterial Libraries

Marshall L Timmermans; Avena C Ross

doi:10.1016/j.tibtech.2019.11.003

Unearthing Hidden Chemical Potential from Discarded Actinobacterial Libraries

Trends Biotechnol. 2020 Jan;38(1):7-9. doi: 10.1016/j.tibtech.2019.11.003. Epub 2019 Nov 27.

Authors

Marshall L Timmermans¹, Avena C Ross²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, Queen's University, Kingston, ONT, Canada.
² Department of Chemistry, Queen's University, Kingston, ONT, Canada. Electronic address: avena.ross@queensu.ca.

PMID: 31785780
DOI: 10.1016/j.tibtech.2019.11.003

Abstract

The redundancy of natural product biosynthesis in microbes poses a practical challenge for discovering new antimicrobial compounds from bacteria. The recent application of clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) technology by Culp et al. to inactivate the production of abundant antibiotics generates a metabolic clean slate for the detection and/or isolation of new and less plentiful antibiotics activated in mutant strains.

Keywords: CRISPR/Cas9; actinomycetes; antibiotic resistance; antibiotics; natural products.

Publication types

Review

MeSH terms

Actinobacteria* / genetics
Actinobacteria* / metabolism
Anti-Bacterial Agents* / chemistry
Anti-Bacterial Agents* / metabolism
CRISPR-Cas Systems
Gene Library*
Genetic Engineering*
Mutation / genetics

Substances

Anti-Bacterial Agents