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Combinatorial Biosynthesis of Antibiotics: Challenges and Opportunities
Author(s) -
Walsh Christopher T.
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
chembiochem
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.05
H-Index - 126
eISSN - 1439-7633
pISSN - 1439-4227
DOI - 10.1002/1439-7633(20020301)3:2/3<124::aid-cbic124>3.0.co;2-j
Subject(s) - antibiotics , encode , computational biology , biosynthesis , antibiotic resistance , biology , gene , metabolic pathway , microbiology and biotechnology , biochemistry
Abstract Natural products with antibiotic activity have been central agents in human therapeutics over the past fifty years. They are likely to remain crucial in the decades to come. These molecules, often termed secondary metabolites because they are the end products of dedicated metabolic pathways that are turned on when microbes are stressed by environmental factors such as starvation, can acheive considerable architectural and functional group complexity that allows specific targeting. The programmed manipulation of the genes that encode the enzymes in the biosynthetic pathways offers promise for redesign of antibiotic structures to create new activities and overcome bacterial resistance to existing antibiotics.