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Microbial Natural Products in the Era of Genome- and Metabolome-Mining (2nd Edition)

A special issue of Molecules (ISSN 1420-3049). This special issue belongs to the section "Natural Products Chemistry".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2023) | Viewed by 2261

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Helmholtz-Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS), Saarbrücken, Germany
Interests: mass spectrometry of natural products; myxobacteria; biosynthetic pathways; genome- and metabolome mining
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Helmholtz-Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS), Saarbrücken, Germany
Interests: natural products; myxobacteria; genetic engineering; biosynthesis; genome- and metabolome mining; antimicrobials; biochemical investigations

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Microbial natural products have a strong history as valuable lead structures for drug discovery in areas ranging from infectious diseases and cancer therapy to agriculture. Thus, great efforts are constantly being made to find novel natural products —also referred to as secondary metabolites or specialized metabolites —from diverse microorganisms. While activity-guided approaches have yielded most of the bioactive secondary metabolites known to date, many of these “low-hanging fruits” have now been harvested. Furthermore, the number of molecule families characterized so far is significantly lower than expected from the analysis of genome sequence information for many microbes. Therefore, contemporary natural products discovery is increasingly driven by genomics- and metabolomics-based strategies in order to provide novel candidate molecules for the development of new drugs. This Special Issue highlights recent studies where genome- and metabolome-mining approaches were instrumental in uncovering and characterizing new natural products. Contributions should include a description of how genome information or metabolomics methods were helpful, e.g., as part of the analytical setup for compound discovery, to support structure elucidation, for connecting molecules to biosynthetic genes, to establish a model for biosynthesis, to shed light on specific enzymatic steps during compound formation, for production improvement, or to gain insights into bioactivity, host self-resistance, and the mode-of-action of the investigated molecules.

Dr. Daniel Krug
Dr. Joachim J. Hug
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Molecules is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • natural products
  • drug discovery
  • secondary metabolites
  • biosynthesis
  • genome-mining
  • metabolomics
  • antibiotics

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

16 pages, 2189 KiB  
Article
Three New Stigmatellin Derivatives Reveal Biosynthetic Insights of Its Side Chain Decoration
by Dorothy A. Okoth, Joachim J. Hug, Ronald Garcia and Rolf Müller
Molecules 2022, 27(14), 4656; https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules27144656 - 21 Jul 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1713
Abstract
Myxobacteria generate natural products with unique chemical structures, which not only feature remarkable biological functions, but also demonstrate unprecedented biosynthetic assembly strategies. The stigmatellins have been previously described as potent inhibitors of the mitochondrial and photosynthetic respiratory chain and originate from an unusual [...] Read more.
Myxobacteria generate natural products with unique chemical structures, which not only feature remarkable biological functions, but also demonstrate unprecedented biosynthetic assembly strategies. The stigmatellins have been previously described as potent inhibitors of the mitochondrial and photosynthetic respiratory chain and originate from an unusual polyketide synthase assembly line. While previous biosynthetic investigations were focused on the formation of the 5,7-dimethoxy-8-hydroxychromone ring, side chain decoration of the hydrophobic alkenyl chain in position 2 was investigated less thoroughly. We report here the full structure elucidation, as well as cytotoxic and antimicrobial activities of three new stigmatellins isolated from the myxobacterium Vitiosangium cumulatum MCy10943T with side chain decorations distinct from previously characterized members of this compound family. The hydrophobic alkenyl chain in position 2 of the herein described stigmatellins feature a terminal carboxylic acid group (1), a methoxy group at C-12′ (2) or a vicinal diol (3). These findings provide further implications considering the side chain decoration of these aromatic myxobacterial polyketides and their underlying biosynthesis. Full article
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