About this Research Topic
Actinomycetes are a heterogenous group of bacteria, well-known for their tremendous potential for secondary metabolite production. Natural products derived from secondary metabolite biosynthesis show diverse biological activities, e.g., antimicrobial, antifungal, antiparasitic, anticancer, or anti-inflammatory, and thus find vast application as therapeutics in medicine or as valuable compounds in other sectors, such as agriculture, food industry, etc. Over the past two decades, thousands of actinomycetes genomes have been sequenced. The analysis of these sequence data disclosed that the genomes on average encode 20-40 biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs), whereby the majority of BGCs are not expressed under standard lab conditions. Consequently, hundreds of potentially new bioactive agents are unexplored. This triggers and sustains the interest of many scientists to engineer actinomycetes to produce new, bioactive, and valuable compounds. Furthermore, the genome sequence data enable the development and application of targeted approaches for compound derivatization, yield improvement, etc.
The Research Topic “Engineering of actinomycetes for the production of bioactive agents” concentrates on new technologies and developments for engineering actinomycetes for natural compound production. We encourage all scientists active in the field to present and discuss their innovations and research. More specifically, we endorse the publication of original research articles, short communications, reviews, mini-reviews, methods, and perspectives that cover the following topics:
Methodology and tools:
- Synthetic Biology approaches, including Molecular Biology tools for engineering of actinomycetes
- Novel genetic manipulation tools and approaches e.g., to address genetically intractable actinomycetes
- Systems Biology (multi-omics) tool to track the biosynthetic potential of actinomycetes
- New actinomycetal chassis (cell factories) for native and heterologous BGC expression
New discoveries and application of novel and available technologies:
- Discovery and characterization of new actinomycetal pathways and their products
- New examples of the application of state-of-the-art technologies (e.g., genome editing, biosynthetic gene cluster (BGC) cloning, refactoring, and activation, yield improvement of relevant compounds)
- Exploring novel enzymes and/or biosynthetic steps to produce actinomycetal compounds (so far undiscovered enzymology)
The Research Topic “Engineering of actinomycetes for the production of bioactive agents” concentrates on new technologies and developments for engineering actinomycetes for natural compound production. We encourage all scientists active in the field to present and discuss their innovations and research. More specifically, we endorse the publication of original research articles, short communications, reviews, mini-reviews, methods, and perspectives that cover the following topics:
Methodology and tools:
- Synthetic Biology approaches, including Molecular Biology tools for engineering of actinomycetes
- Novel genetic manipulation tools and approaches e.g., to address genetically intractable actinomycetes
- Systems Biology (multi-omics) tool to track the biosynthetic potential of actinomycetes
- New actinomycetal chassis (cell factories) for native and heterologous BGC expression
New discoveries and application of novel and available technologies:
- Discovery and characterization of new actinomycetal pathways and their products
- New examples of the application of state-of-the-art technologies (e.g., genome editing, biosynthetic gene cluster (BGC) cloning, refactoring, and activation, yield improvement of relevant compounds)
- Exploring novel enzymes and/or biosynthetic steps to produce actinomycetal compounds (so far undiscovered enzymology)
Keywords: Actinomycetes, biosynthetic gene clusters, synthetic biology, gram-positive, bacteria, genomes, genetic engineering, cell factories
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