Exploring the Bacterial Terpenome

Tens of thousands of terpenoids are present in both terrestrial and marine plants as well as fungi. Terpenes are also produced by numerous bacteria, especially soil‐dwelling Gram‐positive organisms such as Streptomyces and other Actinomycetes. The majority of cyclic terpenes from bacterial species have been uncovered by the newly developed techniques of genome mining. The low level of overall sequence similarity among terpene synthases, however, has so far precluded any simple correlation of protein sequence with the structure of the cyclized terpene product. The actual biochemical function of a cryptic terpene synthase must therefore be determined by direct in vivo or in vitro experiments. The coordinated application of genome mining and biochemical characterization directly couples the discovery of natural products to the simultaneous identification of the responsible biosynthetic genes and enzymes.