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Review
. 2022 Feb 2;11(2):195.
doi: 10.3390/antibiotics11020195.

Beyond Soil-Dwelling Actinobacteria: Fantastic Antibiotics and Where to Find Them

Javier Santos-Aberturas  1 , Natalia M Vior  1
Affiliations
Review

Beyond Soil-Dwelling Actinobacteria: Fantastic Antibiotics and Where to Find Them

Javier Santos-Aberturas et al. Antibiotics (Basel). .

Abstract

Bacterial secondary metabolites represent an invaluable source of bioactive molecules for the pharmaceutical and agrochemical industries. Although screening campaigns for the discovery of new compounds have traditionally been strongly biased towards the study of soil-dwelling Actinobacteria, the current antibiotic resistance and discovery crisis has brought a considerable amount of attention to the study of previously neglected bacterial sources of secondary metabolites. The development and application of new screening, sequencing, genetic manipulation, cultivation and bioinformatic techniques have revealed several other groups of bacteria as producers of striking chemical novelty. Biosynthetic machineries evolved from independent taxonomic origins and under completely different ecological requirements and selective pressures are responsible for these structural innovations. In this review, we summarize the most important discoveries related to secondary metabolites from alternative bacterial sources, trying to provide the reader with a broad perspective on how technical novelties have facilitated the access to the bacterial metabolic dark matter.

Keywords: antibiotics; bacterial diversity; entomopathogenic bacteria; genome mining; secondary metabolites; symbiosis; unculturable bacteria.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Representative compounds produced by sponge-associated bacteria.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Representative compounds produced by tunicate-associated bacteria.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Representative compounds produced by bacteria associated to other groups of marine invertebrates.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Representative compounds produced by insect-associated bacteria.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Representative compunds produced by Xenorhabdus and Photorhabdus.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Additional representative compounds produced by Xenorhabdus and Photorhabdus.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Representative compounds produced by Paenibacillus.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Representative compounds produced by Serratia.
Figure 9
Figure 9
Representative compounds produced by anaerobic bacteria.
Figure 10
Figure 10
Representative compounds produced by Myxobacteria.
Figure 11
Figure 11
Representative compounds produced by Cyanobacteria.
Figure 12
Figure 12
Additional representative compounds produced by Cyanobacteria.
Figure 13
Figure 13
Representative compounds produced by lichen-associated bacteria.
Figure 14
Figure 14
Representative compounds produced by Pseudomonas.
Figure 15
Figure 15
Additional representative compounds produced by Pseudomonas.
Figure 16
Figure 16
Representative molecules produced by Burkholderia.
Figure 17
Figure 17
Representative molecules produced by Planctomycetes.
Figure 18
Figure 18
Representative compounds produced by mammalian gut bacteria.
Figure 19
Figure 19
Representative compounds produced by previously unculturable bacteria from the soil cultivated using the iChip technology.
Figure 20
Figure 20
Representative compounds produced by extremophilic bacteria.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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