Lefevre Fabrice, Robe Patrick, Jarrin Cyrille, Ginolhac Aurélien, Zago Caroline, Auriol Daniel, Vogel Timothy M, Simonet Pascal, Nalin Renaud
LibraGen, 3 rue des Satellites, Bâtiment Canal Biotech I, 31400 Toulouse, France.
Res Microbiol. 2008 Apr;159(3):153-61. doi: 10.1016/j.resmic.2007.12.011. Epub 2008 Feb 12.
The drug discovery process is a starving machine requiring constant feeding with new chemical compounds. Synthetic or natural scaffolds: what are the best sources? While synthetic molecules are rapidly generated by combinatorial chemistry, they show lower chemical diversity than their natural counterparts. A significant fraction of known natural products is issued from microbial secondary metabolism; however, more than 95% of bacterial organisms remain unexploited as a source of active chemical compounds due to their cultivation difficulties. Recent technological advances in metagenomics have provided reliable access to chemicals of these hidden bugs, thus opening up new opportunities for feeding the machine.
药物发现过程就像一台饥饿的机器，需要不断用新的化合物来“投喂”。合成或天然骨架：最佳来源是什么？虽然组合化学能快速生成合成分子，但它们的化学多样性低于天然分子。已知天然产物中有很大一部分来自微生物的次级代谢；然而，超过95%的细菌物种由于培养困难，尚未被开发作为活性化合物的来源。宏基因组学的最新技术进展为获取这些隐藏微生物的化学物质提供了可靠途径，从而为“投喂”这台机器带来了新机遇。
