Molecular Insights into Actinobacterial Genome for Natural Product Discovery

Abstract

Actinobacteria are gram positive and filamentous, is one of the dominant bacterial group and are of great economic importance. Actinobacteria are important sources of major bioactive compounds such as antibiotics, antifungals, immunosuppressants, antiviral, antitumor compounds, and enzymes. Streptomyces, one of the best characterized genus of the Actinomycetes and diverse with more than 600 species, is responsible for the synthesis of the twothird of the known active biomolecules. The genomes of the actinobacteria contains large gene clusters termed as biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) accountable for the synthesis of the secondary metabolites and most of the BGCs which are silent under the laboratory conditions are treasure sources of novel biomolecules. Here we review the important biosynthetic pathways underlying the synthesis of secondary metabolites.