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Fungal Genome Mining and Activation of Silent Gene Clusters

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Book cover Physiology and Genetics

Part of the book series: The Mycota ((MYCOTA,volume 15))

Abstract

Fungi produce numerous secondary metabolites that show antibiotic activity against various microorganisms, antiviral, antitumor and/or fungicidal activity. One of the major challenges, however, is to understand the physiological meaning of the many secondary metabolites for the producing microorganism. As long as this is not understood it is often not possible to produce the compounds under laboratory conditions and to predict the regulatory circuits involved in the regulation of their biosyntheses. This fact is supported by the finding that genome mining of available fungal genomes indicated that their potential to produce compounds is greatly underestimated. Fungal genomes bear the genetic information for the biosynthesis of many more compounds which still await discovery. Despite this limitation, to get access to the vast number of unknown compounds encoded by silent gene clusters, mixing genomic data, genetic engineering and analytical techniques provides a new avenue to discover novel and potentially bioactive natural products.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Molecular and Applied Microbiology, Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology (HKI), Friedrich Schiller University, Beutenbergstrasse 11a, 07745, Jena, Germany

    Axel A. Brakhage, Sebastian Bergmann & Volker Schroeckh

  2. Biomolecular Chemistry, Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology (HKI), Friedrich Schiller University, Beutenbergstrasse 11a, 07745, Jena, Germany

    Julia Schuemann, Kirstin Scherlach & Christian Hertweck

Authors
  1. Axel A. Brakhage
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  2. Sebastian Bergmann
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  3. Julia Schuemann
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  4. Kirstin Scherlach
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  5. Volker Schroeckh
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  6. Christian Hertweck
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Axel A. Brakhage .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Inst. Biotechnologie und, TU Kaiserslautern, Erwin-Schrödinger-Str. 56, Kaiserslautern, 67663, Germany

    Timm Anke

  2. MIP Pharma GmbH, Mühlstr. 50, St.Ingbert, 66386, Germany

    Daniela Weber

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© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Brakhage, A.A., Bergmann, S., Schuemann, J., Scherlach, K., Schroeckh, V., Hertweck, C. (2009). Fungal Genome Mining and Activation of Silent Gene Clusters. In: Anke, T., Weber, D. (eds) Physiology and Genetics. The Mycota, vol 15. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-00286-1_14

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