title: Future potential for anti-infectives from bacteria - how to exploit biodiversity and genomic potential.
abstract: The early stages of antibiotic development include the identification of novel hit compounds. Since actinomycetes and myxobacteria are still the most important natural sources of active metabolites, we provide an overview on these producers and discuss three of the most promising approaches toward finding novel anti-infectives from microorganisms. These are defined as the use of biodiversity to find novel producers, the variation of culture conditions and induction of silent genes, and the exploitation of the genomic potential of producers via "genome mining". Challenges that exist beyond compound discovery are outlined in the last section.
authors.affiliation: Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS), P.O. Box 151150, 66041 Saarbrücken, Germany; Helmholtz Centre for Infectious Research (HZI), Inhoffenstrasse 7, 38124 Braunschweig, Germany.
authors.forename: Rolf
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Müller
authors.affiliation: Helmholtz Centre for Infectious Research (HZI), Inhoffenstrasse 7, 38124 Braunschweig, Germany. Electronic address: joachim.wink@helmholtz-hzi.de.
authors.forename: Joachim
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wink
mesh_terms: D000890:Anti-Infective Agents / Q000302:isolation & purification* / Q000494:pharmacology* / Q000627:therapeutic use; D001419:Bacteria / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000235:genetics; D044822:Biodiversity; D001688:Biological Products / Q000302:isolation & purification* / Q000494:pharmacology* / Q000627:therapeutic use; D055808:Drug Discovery / Q000639:trends*; D023281:Genomics
chemical_list: D000890:Anti-Infective Agents; D001688:Biological Products
keywords: Actinobacteria; Antibiotics; Biodiversity; Genomic potential; Myxobacteria