Abstract
This review focuses on the production of natural bioactive products and their biocontrol capabilities of the enterobacterial genus Serratia. Serratia represents a unique group of enterobacteria with a notable secondary metabolism, able to produce a wide range of natural bioactive products including the β-lactam antibiotic carbapenem or the antifungal compound oocydin A. However, until very recently, most of the Serratia isolates originated from human and animal infections, and a systematic approach to the isolation of Serratia from natural habitats has been missing. The paucity of environmental isolates has so far limited our understanding of the potential of Serratia to produce new natural bioactive products and their capacity to be used in sustainable agriculture as biocontrol agents. The ability to isolate Serratia from soils, together with the analytical capabilities afforded by the democratization of genome sequencing methodologies, opens the door to the isolation and characterization of such novel biocontrol agents, hitherto inaccessible.
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Acknowledgements
We thank George P. C Salmond and Rita Monson from the Biochemistry Department at the University of Cambridge for their help and support in the Serratia phenotypic experiments and for all their knowledge sharing in conducting such experiments. AS is also grateful to the Consejo Social of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid for a scholarship for Internationalization of Ph.D. students.
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Soenens, A., Imperial, J. Biocontrol capabilities of the genus Serratia. Phytochem Rev 19, 577–587 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11101-019-09657-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11101-019-09657-5