Shotgun Cloning and Heterologous Expression of the Patellamide Gene Cluster as a Strategy to Achieving Sustained Metabolite Production

摘要

Secondary metabolites of marine invertebrates show exceptional promise as potential Pharmaceuticals in many therapeutic areas.The main obstacle to the exploitation of these chemically diverse and often complex bioactive marine metabolites is the economic issue of a sustainable supply.Different strategies have been attempted to overcome this impediment,as long-term harvesting of wild stocks from the environment is generally considered unsound.Whole organism aquaculture,tissue culture,symbiont culture and chemical synthesis are possible,but seldom provide the robust and economic yield needed for a commercially viable global supply.One promising option is to clone the biosynthetic genes that encode the expression of a lead metabolite into a surrogate host suitable for industrial-scale fermentation.