Actinomycete Natural Products: Isolation, Structure Elucidation, Biological Activity, Biosynthesis, and Yield Improvement

Natural products from actinomycetes have historically provided humans with numerous antibiotics (i.e., streptomycin, gentamycin, and vancomycin), anticancer agents (doxorubicin, bleomycin, and calicheamicins), and agrochemicals (avermectin and spinosad). The discovery and biological evaluation of new natural products from actinomycetes is an endless frontier in the post-genomic era, mainly driven by microbial genomics and synthetic biology. The biosynthesis of actinomycete natural products would not only decipher how nature builds these complex molecules using small building blocks, such as amino acids and acyl-CoA, but also provide an important rationale for their yield improvements. Some natural products have unprecedented structural scaffolds and impressive biological activities, inspiring synthetic and medicinal chemists to design and synthesize the next generation of medicines. Moreover, actinomycetes have the advantage of enabling to retrieval of natural products by fermentation techniques.

This Research Topic aims at improving our knowledge and understanding of actinomycete natural products. We welcome Original Research articles and Reviews focused on:
• Isolation and structure elucidation of novel natural products of actinomycete origin, especially from rare actinomycetes or streptomycetes from unique ecological niches.
• Genome mining of actinomycete natural products.
• Biological activities of isolated compounds and their structure-activity relationship study.
• Biosynthesis and regulation of diverse actinomycete natural products.
• Yield improvement of isolated natural products with promising biological activities.