The marine actinomycete genus Salinispora: a model organism for secondary metabolite discovery

Abstract

This review covers the initial discovery of the marine actinomycete genus Salinispora through its development as a model for natural product research. A focus is placed on the novel chemical structures reported with reference to their biological activities and the synthetic and biosynthetic studies they have inspired. The time line of discoveries progresses from more traditional bioassay-guided approaches through the application of genome mining and genetic engineering techniques that target the products of specific biosynthetic gene clusters. This overview exemplifies the extraordinary biosynthetic diversity that can emanate from a narrowly defined genus and supports future efforts to explore marine taxa in the search for novel natural products.

Figure 1

Global locations from which the genus Salinispora has been reported. These reports originate from multiple research groups and are based on GenBank (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/) 16S rRNA sequence deposits.