Wu Lin-Zhuan, Hong Bin
Key Laboratory of Biotechnology of Antibiotics of Ministry of Health, Institute of Medicinal Biotechnology, Peking Union Medical College and Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing 100050, China.
Yao Xue Xue Bao. 2013 Feb;48(2):155-60.
Microbial secondary metabolites are one of the major sources of anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, antitumor, anti-virus and immunosuppressive agents for clinical use. Present challenges in microbial pharmaceutical development are the discovery of novel secondary metabolites with significant biological activities, improving the fermentation titers of industrial microbial strains, and production of natural product drugs by re-establishing their biosynthetic pathways in suitable microbial hosts. Synthetic biology, which is developed from systematic biology and metabolic engineering, provides a significant driving force for microbial pharmaceutical development. The review describes the major applications of synthetic biology in novel microbial secondary metabolite discovery, improved production of known secondary metabolites and the production of some natural drugs in genetically modified or reconstructed model microorganisms.
微生物次级代谢产物是临床使用的抗菌、抗真菌、抗肿瘤、抗病毒和免疫抑制剂的主要来源之一。微生物药物开发目前面临的挑战包括发现具有显著生物活性的新型次级代谢产物、提高工业微生物菌株的发酵效价，以及通过在合适的微生物宿主中重新建立其生物合成途径来生产天然产物药物。合成生物学由系统生物学和代谢工程发展而来，为微生物药物开发提供了重要驱动力。本文综述了合成生物学在新型微生物次级代谢产物发现、已知次级代谢产物产量提高以及在基因改造或重建的模式微生物中生产某些天然药物方面的主要应用。
