Abstract
Screening for microbial secondary metabolites (SMs) has attracted the attention of the scientific community since 1940s. In fact, since the discovery of penicillin, intensive researches have been conducted worldwide in order to detect and identify novel microbial secondary metabolites. As a result, the discovery of novel SMs has been decreased significantly by using traditional experiments. Therefore, searching for new techniques to discover novel SMs was one of the most priority objectives. However, the development and advances of omics-based techniques such as metabolomics and genomics have revealed the potential of discovering novel SMs which were coded in the microorganisms’ DNA but not expressed in the lab media or might be produced in undetectable amount by detecting the biosynthesis gene clusters (BGCs) that are associated with the biosynthesis of secondary metabolites. Nowadays, the development and integration of gene editing tools such as CRISPR-Cas9 in metabolomics provide a successful platform for the identification and detection of known and novel SMs and also to increase the production of SMs.
Highlights
The term secondary metabolites (SMs) was first mentioned in 1891 by A
Gene manipulation in heterologous host enables the activation of biosynthesis gene clusters (BGCs) obtained from unculturable organisms, whereas gene manipulation in homologous host allows the retention of all natural factors essential for the production of secondary metabolites [17]
Comparing with transformation-assisted recombination (TAR)-CRISPR, which is a yeast-based method, basically mCRISTAR uses CRISPR-Cas9 to break the double-stranded in the promoter region of the BGC, and the fragments produced are reassembled by TAR with synthetic gene-cluster-specific promoter cassettes
Summary
The term secondary metabolites (SMs) was first mentioned in 1891 by A. This is because, all of the new revealed SMs are not produced naturally under the lab conditions, or even though they are produced, this in very low amount that the traditional detection techniques are unable to detect them [8, 9]. Metabolomics approach aims to discover and characterize secondary metabolites in natural or engineered biosystems, and it can measure as many low molecular weight compounds as possible Metabolomicsbased technologies such as mass spectrometry (MS) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) have been identified as significant analytical methods to detect SMs produced under specific conditions [10]. The present chapter provides an overview of present-day metabolomic and genetic engineering approaches for secondary metabolites’ enhancement and identification [11]
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