Bioactive Compounds from Microorganisms

Microorganisms are rich sources of bioactive compounds, and some of which have pharmacological interests. Examples of drugs from microorganisms are acarbose and voglibose (antidiabetic drugs), lovastatin (cholesterol lowering agent), and ciclosporin (an immunosuppressant drug). In addition, recent studies related to the ecological roles of microbiota associated with their host revealed their huge potential to produce bioactive compounds. Bioactive natural products from microorganisms have received attention from scientists because their potential in drug development. As mentioned above, some microbial compounds are clinically-used drugs such as acarbose, voglibose, and lovastatin. Microbial metabolites exhibit various biological activities including anticancer, antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral, antiinflamatory, and antioxidant activities. Moreover, some compounds from microorganisms also act as enzyme inhibitors such as inhibitors for kinases and glucosidases, which are the key targets in drug development. Recently, there are many new microbial metabolites with diverse chemical skeletons and diverse biological activities that are isolated from microorganisms. Biosynthetic pathway of important microbial metabolites, some of which are drugs and drug candidates, has been intensively explored, aiming to understand enzymatic catalysis at the individual biosynthetic steps, as well as to generate new derivatives through the genetic manipulation. Since particular microbial metabolites have a marked biological activity of pharmaceutical interest, their mechanism of action has been investigated, aiming to understand the mode of action of compounds for the drug development.

This Research Topic includes both Review and Original Research articles on bioactive metabolites from microorganisms. Subjects covered include, but are not limited to:

- the isolation and characterization of bioactive metabolites from microbial origins, e.g. fungi, bacteria, and cyanobacteria
- biosynthesis of the microbial metabolites and biotransformation of important compounds using microorganisms
- medicinal chemistry of microbial metabolites for certain biological activity, i.e., structure modification of natural products for the evaluation of biological activities, aiming to improve pharmacological activities
- the mechanism of action of microbial compounds (or derivatives) toward interesting drug targets
- prospective and future trends on research on microbial metabolites