Genome Mining for Novel Natural Product Discovery

Abstract

Genomics has resulted in the deposition of a huge quantity of DNA sequence data from a wide variety of organisms in publicly accessible databases. Such data can be exploited to generate new knowledge in several areas relevant to medicinal chemistry including the characterization of human physiological processes, the identification and validation of new drug targets in human pathogens, and the discovery of new chemical entities (NCEsa) from natural sources, which may form the basis for new drug leads. The term “genome mining” has been used in various fields to describe the exploitation of genomic information for the discovery of new processes, targets, and products. This Miniperspective will focus on the development of genome mining approaches for the discovery of new natural products. It will also discuss future prospects for the application of genome mining technology to NCE discovery and lead generation.