Aigle, Bertrand, Bunet, Robert, Corre, Christophe, Garenaux, Amélie, Huang, S., Laureti, Luisa, Lautru, Sylvie, Vaz Mendez, Maria, Nezbedová, Sárka, Nguyen, H.C., Song, L., Weiser, J., Challis, Gregory, Leblond, Pierre, Pernodet, Jean-Luc, Laboratoire de génétique et microbiologie (LGM), Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA)-Université Henri Poincaré - Nancy 1 (UHP), Centre de Recherche en Infectiologie Porcine (CRIP), Faculté de médecine vétérinaire, Institut de Biologie Intégrative de la Cellule (I2BC), Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-Université Paris-Saclay-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Institut de génétique et microbiologie [Orsay] (IGM), Université Paris-Sud - Paris 11 (UP11)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paul J Dyson Institute of Life Sciences, School of Medicine, Swansea, UK, and Université Paris-Sud - Paris 11 (UP11)-Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-Université Paris-Saclay-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
International audience; Members of the Streptomyces genus are among the most prolific microorganisms producing secondary metabolites with wide uses in medicine and in agriculture. Sequencing of the genome of the model Streptomyces, Streptomyces coelicolor, has highlighted an unexpected feature, i.e. that the potential of these organisms to synthesise secondary metabolites has been largely underestimated. They indeed possess many more gene clusters encoding natural product-like biosynthetic pathways than there are known natural products. Similar observations have since been made for other bacterial or fungal genomes. Thus, it became clear that microbial secondary metabolism had been seriously underestimated and that genome-based approaches were very promising for the search of new bioactive compounds. Here, we present an overview of the secondary metabolite biosynthetic potential of Streptomyces ambofaciens, a species known for decades as producer of the macrolide spiramycin and the pyrrolamide congocidine. Interestingly, genome analysis has revealed that despite of the close phylogenetic relatedness between S. coelicolor and S. ambofaciens, most of its secondary metabolite gene clusters are species-specific.