Bioengineering of microorganisms aiming for drug development

Abstract

Microorganisms have been used as producers of primary and secondary metabolites as exemplified by amino acids and antibiotics. For these purposes, microorganisms possessing desirable abilities have been traditionally screened. However, we are recently able to employ another approach utilizing (meta) genome databases. By comparative genomics, we revealed alternative pathways for menaquinone and peptidoglycan biosynthesis and developed new screening strategies for antibiotics specifically acting on pathogens possessing these new pathways. We have also been mining biosynthetic genes of secondary metabolites and characterized them in detail. In this review, I briefly summarize these results.