Metabolomics methods for the synthetic biology of secondary metabolism

[No Value] Quoc-Thai Nguyen, Maria E. Merlo, Marnix H. Medema, Andris Jankevics, Rainer Breitling, Eriko Takano*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

55 Citations (Scopus)
349 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Many microbial secondary metabolites are of high biotechnological value for medicine, agriculture, and the food industry. Bacterial genome mining has revealed numerous novel secondary metabolite biosynthetic gene clusters, which encode the potential to synthesize a large diversity of compounds that have never been observed before. The stimulation or "awakening" of this cryptic microbial secondary metabolism has naturally attracted the attention of synthetic microbiologists, who exploit recent advances in DNA sequencing and synthesis to achieve unprecedented control over metabolic pathways. One of the indispensable tools in the synthetic biology toolbox is metabolomics, the global quantification of small biomolecules. This review illustrates the pivotal role of metabolomics for the synthetic microbiology of secondary metabolism, including its crucial role in novel compound discovery in microbes, the examination of side products of engineered metabolic pathways, as well as the identification of major bottlenecks for the overproduction of compounds of interest, especially in combination with metabolic modeling. We conclude by highlighting remaining challenges and recent technological advances that will drive metabolomics towards fulfilling its potential as a cornerstone technology of synthetic microbiology. (C) 2012 Federation of European Biochemical Societies. Published by Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2177-2183
Number of pages7
JournalFEBS Letters
Volume586
Issue number15
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 16-Jul-2012

Keywords

  • Metabolomic
  • Synthetic biology
  • Secondary metabolism
  • METHYLOBACTERIUM-EXTORQUENS AM1
  • STREPTOMYCES-COELICOLOR A3(2)
  • ETHYLMALONYL-COA PATHWAY
  • COMPLETE GENOME SEQUENCE
  • MASS-SPECTROMETRY
  • POLYKETIDE SYNTHASE
  • MICROBIAL METABOLOMICS
  • MYXOCOCCUS-XANTHUS
  • CHEMICAL-SYNTHESIS
  • ESCHERICHIA-COLI

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