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Cyanobacteria: photosynthetic factories combining biodiversity, radiation resistance, and genetics to facilitate drug discovery

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Abstract

Cyanobacteria are ancient, abundant, and widely diverse photosynthetic prokaryotes, which are viewed as promising cell factories for the ecologically responsible production of chemicals. Natural cyanobacteria synthesize a vast array of biologically active (secondary) metabolites with great potential for human health, while a few genetic models can be engineered for the (low level) production of biofuels. Recently, genome sequencing and mining has revealed that natural cyanobacteria have the capacity to produce many more secondary metabolites than have been characterized. The corresponding panoply of enzymes (polyketide synthases and non-ribosomal peptide synthases) of interest for synthetic biology can still be increased through gene manipulations with the tools available for the few genetically manipulable strains. In this review, we propose to exploit the metabolic diversity and radiation resistance of cyanobacteria, and when required the genetics of model strains, for the production and radioactive (14C) labeling of bioactive products, in order to facilitate the screening for new drugs.

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Acknowledgements

We thank our colleagues Jean Labarre, Gilles Lagniel, Denis Servent, Romulo Araoz, and Nicolas Gilles for helpful discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Integrative Biology of the Cell (I2BC), CEA, CNRS, Univ Paris-Sud, Université Paris-Saclay, 91191, Gif-sur-Yvette cedex, France

    Corinne Cassier-Chauvat & Franck Chauvat

  2. Service d’Ingénierie Moléculaire des Protéines (SIMOPRO), IBITECS, CEA, Université Paris-Saclay, F-91191, Gif-sur-Yvette, France

    Vincent Dive

Authors
  1. Corinne Cassier-Chauvat
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  2. Vincent Dive
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  3. Franck Chauvat
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Correspondence to Franck Chauvat.

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This study was funded by the CEA.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

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Cassier-Chauvat, C., Dive, V. & Chauvat, F. Cyanobacteria: photosynthetic factories combining biodiversity, radiation resistance, and genetics to facilitate drug discovery. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 101, 1359–1364 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-017-8105-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-017-8105-z

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