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Natural products from anaerobes

  • Natural Products - Original Paper
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Journal of Industrial Microbiology & Biotechnology

Abstract

Natural product discovery in the microbial world has historically been biased toward aerobes. Recent in silico analysis demonstrates that genomes of anaerobes encode unexpected biosynthetic potential for natural products, however, chemical data on natural products from the anaerobic world are extremely limited. Here, we review the current body of work on natural products isolated from strictly anaerobic microbes, including recent genome mining efforts to discover polyketides and non-ribosomal peptides from anaerobes. These known natural products of anaerobes have demonstrated interesting molecular scaffolds, biosynthetic logic, and/or biological activities, making anaerobes a promising reservoir for future natural product discovery.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the Energy Biosciences Institute, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the National Institutes of Health (DP2AT009148), and the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator Program.

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Author notes

  1. Jeffrey S. Li and Colin Barber contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Jeffrey S. Li & Wenjun Zhang

  2. Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Colin Charles Barber

  3. Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Wenjun Zhang

Authors
  1. Jeffrey S. Li
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  2. Colin Charles Barber
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  3. Wenjun Zhang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Wenjun Zhang.

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This article is part of the Special Issue “Natural Product Discovery and Development in the Genomic Era 2019”.

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Li, J.S., Barber, C.C. & Zhang, W. Natural products from anaerobes. J Ind Microbiol Biotechnol 46, 375–383 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10295-018-2086-5

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