Abstract
Copyright: © 2013 Gallo. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Most bioactive molecules (like anticancers, antitumors, antibiotics, immunosuppressants, insecticidals, antivirals, herbicidals, antifungals) with valuable industrial and market value are naturally produced by actinomycetes [1-4], Gram-positive filamentous bacteria widespread in both terrestrial and aquatic environments [5,6]. Out of thousands of bioactive molecules, also known as secondary metabolites since they are not essential for actinomycete growth in standard laboratory condition at least, more than 50% are synthesised by strains of Streptomyces genus [4]. Despite the cellular and ecological role of secondary metabolites is still debated [3,7], microbial fermentation is widely exploited to produce these compounds at industrial level. Although they have many different activities and range within a vast chemical complexity and diversity, there are two main common issues which could be addressed for the establishment of a cost-effective microbial fermentation process:
Highlights
The development of a robust and economically feasible production process for secondary metabolites implies the study of strain physiology combined with a detailed knowledge of the production process and its scalability to industrial level
NAI-107 is produced by fermentation of the actinomycete Microbispora sp
Since no lantibiotics are industrially produced as drugs for human use and there are no examples of industrial use of Microbispora genus, delivering a high quantity of high quality compound is extremely challenging
Summary
The development of a robust and economically feasible production process for secondary metabolites implies the study of strain physiology combined with a detailed knowledge of the production process and its scalability to industrial level. *Corresponding author: Giuseppe Gallo, Department of Biological, Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences and Technologies,University of Palermo, Italy. Received December 07, 2013; Accepted December 09, 2013; Published December 17, 2013
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