title: Engineering antibiotic production and overcoming bacterial resistance.
abstract: Progress in DNA technology, analytical methods and computational tools is leading to new developments in synthetic biology and metabolic engineering, enabling new ways to produce molecules of industrial and therapeutic interest. Here, we review recent progress in both antibiotic production and strategies to counteract bacterial resistance to antibiotics. Advances in sequencing and cloning are increasingly enabling the characterization of antibiotic biosynthesis pathways, and new systematic methods for de novo biosynthetic pathway prediction are allowing the exploration of the metabolic chemical space beyond metabolic engineering. Moreover, we survey the computer-assisted design of modular assembly lines in polyketide synthases and non-ribosomal peptide synthases for the development of tailor-made antibiotics. Nowadays, production of novel antibiotic can be tranferred into any chosen chassis by optimizing a host factory through specific strain modifications. These advances in metabolic engineering and synthetic biology are leading to novel strategies for engineering antimicrobial agents with desired specificities.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Systems and Synthetic Biology, University of Evry-Val-d'Esonne, 5 rue Henri Desbruères, Evry, France.
authors.forename: Anne-Gaëlle
authors.initials: AG
authors.lastname: Planson
authors.forename: Pablo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Carbonell
authors.forename: Ioana
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Grigoras
authors.forename: Jean-Loup
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Faulon
mesh_terms: D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents / Q000096:biosynthesis* / Q000737:chemistry / Q000494:pharmacology; D019295:Computational Biology; D015195:Drug Design; D024881:Drug Resistance, Bacterial; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D058615:Synthetic Biology
chemical_list: D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents