Abstract
Laura A. Mike works in the field of bacterial pathogenesis. In this mSphere of Influence article, she reflects on how "Insights into Secondary Metabolism from a Global Analysis of Prokaryotic Biosynthetic Gene Clusters" by P. Cimermancic et al. (Cell 158:412-421, 2014, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2014.06.034) and "A Systematic Analysis of Biosynthetic Gene Clusters in the Human Microbiome Reveals a Common Family of Antibiotics" by M. S. Donia et al. (Cell 158:1402-1414, 2014, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2014.08.032) made an impact on her by systematically identifying microbiome-associated biosynthetic gene clusters predicted to synthesize secondary metabolites, which may facilitate interspecies interactions.
Highlights
Secondary metabolites (SMs) have traditionally been studied in the context of identifying novel pharmaceutical compounds or harnessing the powerful enzymes encoded in their biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs)
The secondary metabolism of BGC-rich phyla, namely, the Actinobacteria and Proteobacteria, have been more thoroughly explored; this approach has neglected most bacteria, those associated with a host
The results from the publications that first described and validated the experimental pipeline (1) and applied that pipeline to genomic data curated by the NIH Human Microbiome Project (2) have provided a framework to systematically decipher the natural functions of SMs and influenced how I think about host-microbe interactions
Summary
Secondary metabolites (SMs) have traditionally been studied in the context of identifying novel pharmaceutical compounds or harnessing the powerful enzymes encoded in their biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs). As the microbiome field has grown, so have questions regarding the function of microbially derived primary and secondary metabolites in host-microbe and microbe-microbe interactions.
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