Biosynthesis of Marine Natural Products
A special issue of Marine Drugs (ISSN 1660-3397).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 January 2011) | Viewed by 10216
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Over the past 15 years, we have registered an immense progress in the field of biosynthesis of secondary metabolites from marine macro- and microorganisms. The main reason for this success is directly related to the use of new genetic tools in natural products research allowing to look at genes and their function in samples obtained from marine environments. The combination of experimental strategies involving metagenomic analyses, bioinformatics, cell sorting, and microbial fermentation, in addition to the development of ingenious techniques for conducting precursor driven feeding studies, brought new insights for a detailed understanding of the biosynthetic origin and structural diversity of marine natural products.
Considering the impact of the genomic revolution in areas of natural products chemistry, it is expected that future achievements in biosynthetic studies of marine secondary metabolites should contribute to the supply of molecular toolboxes used in genetic engineering of new drugs from marine origin.
These are undoubtedly good reasons to devote this special issue of Marine Drugs to the Biosynthesis of Marine Natural Products, hoping that manuscripts here included will cover recent developments within this field.
Prof. Dr. Pedro Abreu
Guest Editor
Keywords
- biosynthesis
- marine macroorganisms
- marine microorganisms
- biodiscovery
- genomics
- metagenomics
- bioinformatics
- biosynthetic gene clusters
- feeding studies
- culturing techniques
- genetic engineering
