Systems metabolic engineering for the enhanced production of secondary metabolites

Abstract

Microbial secondary metabolites, especially those produced by actinomycetes, are considered as a great source of various medically important molecules. In secondary metabolism studies, isolation of a strain producing a candidate secondary metabolite should be accompanied with systematic strain characterization that should involve accurate understanding of biosynthetic gene clusters and metabolic pathways responsible for the biosynthesis of a target secondary metabolite. To this end, an array of software programs and computational models will be discussed that can facilitate discovery and further enhanced production of secondary metabolites. Also, our recent efforts in systems metabolic engineering will be introduced that were able to enhance the production of secondary metabolites from Streptomyces species. Continued efforts in developing software programs and computational models along with generation of meaningful biological datasets will innovate our approaches to systems metabolic engineering.