Articles of Significant Interest Selected from This Issue by the Editors

摘要

Exploitation of cyanobacterial natural products is largely hampered by slow bacterial growth and the silence of biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs). Guljamow et al. (e01510-17) demonstrate that a novel cultivation device facilitates rapid growth of Nostoc strains toward ultrahigh densities and leads to a pronounced up-regulation of a number of natural product BGCs. The study suggests that extracellular signals control cell type-specific expression of BGCs. The novel cultivation approach enabled the capture and structural elucidation of new variants of the nonribosomal peptide anabaenopeptin displaying allelopathic activity against strains from the same habitat.