Natural Product Genomics and Metabolomics of Marine Microorganisms

Dear Colleagues,

Marine microorganisms are an abundant and sustainable source of novel natural products with complex structural features and promising biological activities with unique mechanisms of action, thus, their growing presence in the research spotlight for more than a decade now. Current developments in computing technology have made it possible for relatively low cost and high-quality genome packages, leading to an exponential increase of publicly available microbial genomes. In combination with the advancement of bioinformatics tools, researchers can unravel the unique biosynthetic machinery of marine microbes to elicit and prompt the discovery of new metabolites.

Analytical techniques such as MS and NMR have been rapidly evolving and contributing to high-throughput coupled systems to aid the isolation and chemical characterization of natural products. Metabolomics is gaining attention within the field of natural products, which is evident by the increasing number of publications in recent years. Metabolomics has become an efficient tool for dereplication studies employed for isolation and optimising the yield of targeted biologically active metabolites in microbial fermentation cultures.

Both genomics and metabolomics have enabled the definition of interesting natural products as targets for further bioprospecting. However, it remains a challenge to integrate genomics and metabolomics data for accelerating microbial natural product discovery to improve yields and optimize the biological efficacy of targeted metabolites. With the surging occurrence of multidrug resistance and the emergence of new diseases, the search for new potential drugs has never been more relevant to confront in the “omics era”. This Special Issue is inviting studies on multi-omics approaches based on metabolomics and genomics for marine microbial natural products for drug discovery.

Dr. Sylvia Soldatou
Dr. RuAngelie Edrada-Ebel
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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