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Cryptic Chemical Communication: Secondary Metabolic Responses Revealed by Microbial Co‐culture
Author(s) -
Liu Chao,
Kakeya Hideaki
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
chemistry – an asian journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.18
H-Index - 106
eISSN - 1861-471X
pISSN - 1861-4728
DOI - 10.1002/asia.201901505
Subject(s) - axenic , axenic culture , biology , chemical communication , computational biology , genetics , microbiology and biotechnology , bacteria , sex pheromone
Microbial secondary metabolites (SMs) have long been viewed as a significant source of novel pharmaceutical and agrochemical molecules. With the increasing availability of genomic data, numerous biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) have been discovered. Despite the presence of tens of thousands of BGCs that can theoretically produce extremely diverse SMs, many gene clusters remain in a silent state under axenic culture conditions. Co‐culture is a promising research approach as it stimulates the expression of cryptic BGCs to produce novel metabolites and also mimics natural interspecies interactions in a laboratory environment. In recent years, the roles of SMs in microbial communication have caught the attention of researchers and our understanding of microbes and their production of remarkable SMs has improved. SMs may be extensively involved in a variety of communication events among microorganisms. We herein summarize certain representative findings in the field of chemical communication involving SMs in co‐culture systems.