Engineering Streptomyces

Engineering Streptomyces

Engineering Streptomyces

SabahToorabally

Sarah Sonnenberg

Actinomycetes have the capacity to produce novel substances; they are responsible for 50% of explored bioactive secondary metabolites such as: antibiotics, anticancer agents, anti-inflammatory agents, and enzymes.1 This is crucial due the global health threat antimicrobial resistance poses, which jeopardises the efficacy of the treatment and prevention of infections.2 Metabolic engineering systematically engineers microbial strains to overproduce these natural products,3 and in actinomyces the expression of a large ATP-binding regulator of the LuxR family (LAL) protein is present in numerous gene clusters that direct the production of known secondary metabolites.4 This project engineered the LAL positive pOSV566t plasmid into the streptomyces strain Streptantibioticus cattleyicolor, and future work will analyse its natural products.

Streptomyces, bacteria, bioengineering