Mar. Drugs 2013, 11(3), 700-717; doi:10.3390/md11030700
Review

Recent Advances in the Discovery and Development of Marine Microbial Natural Products

Zhi-Qiang Xiong 1 email, Jian-Feng Wang 1,2 email, Yu-You Hao 1 email and Yong Wang 1,* email
1 Key Laboratory of Synthetic Biology, Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200032, China 2 State Key Laboratory of Bioreactor Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237, China
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Received: 28 December 2012; in revised form: 25 January 2013 / Accepted: 6 February 2013 / Published: 8 March 2013
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Marine Secondary Metabolites)
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Abstract: Marine microbial natural products (MMNPs) have attracted increasing attention from microbiologists, taxonomists, ecologists, agronomists, chemists and evolutionary biologists during the last few decades. Numerous studies have indicated that diverse marine microbes appear to have the capacity to produce an impressive array of MMNPs exhibiting a wide variety of biological activities such as antimicrobial, anti-tumor, anti-inflammatory and anti-cardiovascular agents. Marine microorganisms represent an underexplored reservoir for the discovery of MMNPs with unique scaffolds and for exploitation in the pharmaceutical and agricultural industries. This review focuses on MMNPs discovery and development over the past decades, including innovative isolation and culture methods, strategies for discovering novel MMNPs via routine screenings, metagenomics, genomics, combinatorial biosynthesis, and synthetic biology. The potential problems and future directions for exploring MMNPs are also discussed.
Keywords: marine microbial natural products; metagenomics; screening; genome sequencing; combinatorial biosynthesis; heterologous biosynthesis

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Cite This Article

MDPI and ACS Style

Xiong, Z.-Q.; Wang, J.-F.; Hao, Y.-Y.; Wang, Y. Recent Advances in the Discovery and Development of Marine Microbial Natural Products. Mar. Drugs 2013, 11, 700-717.

AMA Style

Xiong Z-Q, Wang J-F, Hao Y-Y, Wang Y. Recent Advances in the Discovery and Development of Marine Microbial Natural Products. Marine Drugs. 2013; 11(3):700-717.

Chicago/Turabian Style

Xiong, Zhi-Qiang; Wang, Jian-Feng; Hao, Yu-You; Wang, Yong. 2013. "Recent Advances in the Discovery and Development of Marine Microbial Natural Products." Mar. Drugs 11, no. 3: 700-717.

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