Comparative genomics of actinomycetes with a focus on natural product biosynthetic genes

摘要

BackgroundActinomycetes are a diverse group of medically, industrially and ecologically important bacteria, studied as much for the diseases they cause as for the cures they hold. The genomes of actinomycetes revealed that these bacteria have a large number of natural product gene clusters, although many of these are difficult to tie to products in the laboratory. Large scale comparisons of these clusters are difficult to perform due to the presence of highly similar repeated domains in the most common biosynthetic machinery: polyketide synthases (PKSs) and nonribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPSs).