Exploiting Genomics for New Natural Product Discovery in Prokaryotes

Genomics generates an exponentially increasing amount of DNA sequence data. Analyses of DNA sequences from bacteria have revealed many genes and gene clusters encoding proteins predicted to be involved in the biosynthesis of natural products. However, in many cases, the metabolic product(s) of these so-called cryptic biosynthetic systems is not known. This chapter describes the nature of the most common biosynthetic systems and the development of bioinformatics tools for analyzing them. These tools enable predictions regarding the structural features of the products of cryptic biosynthetic systems to be made. Finally, the experimental strategies developed for identifying the products of cryptic biosynthetic systems, several of which rely on the predictions derived from bioinformatics, are discussed.