Genome mining and biosynthetic pathways of marine-derived fungal bioactive natural products

Front Microbiol. 2024 Dec 12:15:1520446. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2024.1520446. eCollection 2024.

Abstract

Marine fungal natural products (MFNPs) are a vital source of pharmaceuticals, primarily synthesized by relevant biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs). However, many of these BGCs remain silent under standard laboratory culture conditions, delaying the development of novel drugs from MFNPs to some extent. This review highlights recent efforts in genome mining and biosynthetic pathways of bioactive natural products from marine fungi, focusing on methods such as bioinformatics analysis, gene knockout, and heterologous expression to identify relevant BGCs and elucidate the biosynthetic pathways and enzyme functions of MFNPs. The research efforts presented in this review provide essential insights for future gene-guided mining and biosynthetic pathway analysis in MFNPs.

Keywords: biosynthesis; biosynthetic gene clusters; genome mining; marine fungi; marine natural products.

Publication types

  • Review

Grants and funding

The authors declare that financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work was financially supported by the Youth Science and Technology Talent Development Project of the Guizhou Provincial Department of Education (No. Qian Jiao Ji [2024] 135), the Zhuhai Campus Technology Innovation Team of Zunyi Medical University (No. ZHTD2024-3), and the Guizhou provincial Science and Technology Projects (No. Qian Ke He Jichu-[2024] Qingnian 308).