Hoskisson, PA and Seipke, RF orcid.org/0000-0002-6156-8498 (2020) Cryptic or silent? The known unknowns, unknown knowns and unknown unknowns of secondary metabolism. mBio, 11 (5). e02642-20. ISSN 2150-7511
Abstract
Microbial natural products, particularly those produced by filamentous Actinobacteria, underpin the majority of clinically used antibiotics. Unfortunately, only a few new antibiotic classes have been discovered since the 1970s, which has exacerbated fears of a postapocalyptic world in which antibiotics have lost their utility. Excitingly, the genome sequencing revolution painted an entirely new picture, one in which an average strain of filamentous Actinobacteria harbors 20 to 50 natural product biosynthetic pathways but expresses very few of these under laboratory conditions. Development of methodology to access this “hidden” biochemical diversity has the potential to usher in a second Golden Era of antibiotic discovery. The proliferation of genomic data has led to inconsistent use of “cryptic” and “silent” when referring to biosynthetic gene clusters identified by bioinformatic analysis. In this Perspective, we discuss this issue and propose to formalize the use of this terminology.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2020 Hoskisson and Seipke. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Biological Sciences (Leeds) > School of Biology (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number BBSRC (Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council) BB/T008075/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 29 Sep 2020 09:49 |
Last Modified: | 04 Dec 2020 17:30 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | American Society for Microbiology |
Identification Number: | 10.1128/mBio.02642-20 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:165845 |