Biochemical and synthetic chemical approaches to studying the biosynthesis and regulation of bacterial secondary metabolites
type: CreativeWork
description: For several decades, significant scientific interest has been dedicated to developing bioactive small molecules to treat pathogenic infections. Despite the huge amount of efforts in the past few decades, resistant strains continue to emerge with every introduction of new therapeutic compounds into the clinic, leading to multi-drug resistant (MDR) strains that continue to be a serious health problem. This implies an urgent need for novel antimicrobial drugs to be added to the plethora of the already existing ones to overcome resistance. Recent studies have depicted that the major contributing source of the antimicrobial compound library originates from natural products.1 Thus, research on their biosynthesis to understand their function is of the utmost importance to utilize nature’s tools to generate these bioactive small molecule variants. Bioactive natural products, the molecules produced by living organisms, which possess antibacterial, antiviral, antimalarial, cytotoxic, and/or immunosuppressive properties represent a plentiful source of medically relevant compounds. Despite the abundance of these molecules, their synthesis often involves major challenges due to their complex structures. However, nature has overcome several major problems that we encounter during the chemical synthesis of small molecules. For example, enzymes that act as biocatalysts by specifically binding and orienting small ligands for selective modifications have provided a solution for the challenging stereochemical and regioselective modifications on the starting material to produce a single product. For the past few decades, there has been an increasing interest and demand to utilize enzymes as an alternative method for the production of a variety of compounds for chemoenzymatic semi-synthesis. The high activity of enzymes under mild conditions and the absence of harsh chemicals and byproducts used in chemical synthesis further emboldens this approach. Enzymes can be utilized to avoid the …
abstract: For several decades, significant scientific interest has been dedicated to developing bioactive small molecules to treat pathogenic infections. Despite the huge amount of efforts in the past few decades, resistant strains continue to emerge with every introduction of new therapeutic compounds into the clinic, leading to multi-drug resistant (MDR) strains that continue to be a serious health problem. This implies an urgent need for novel antimicrobial drugs to be added to the plethora of the already existing ones to overcome resistance. Recent studies have depicted that the major contributing source of the antimicrobial compound library originates from natural products.1 Thus, research on their biosynthesis to understand their function is of the utmost importance to utilize nature’s tools to generate these bioactive small molecule variants. Bioactive natural products, the molecules produced by living organisms, which possess antibacterial, antiviral, antimalarial, cytotoxic, and/or immunosuppressive properties represent a plentiful source of medically relevant compounds. Despite the abundance of these molecules, their synthesis often involves major challenges due to their complex structures. However, nature has overcome several major problems that we encounter during the chemical synthesis of small molecules. For example, enzymes that act as biocatalysts by specifically binding and orienting small ligands for selective modifications have provided a solution for the challenging stereochemical and regioselective modifications on the starting material to produce a single product. For the past few decades, there has been an increasing interest and demand to utilize enzymes as an alternative method for the production of a variety of compounds for chemoenzymatic semi-synthesis. The high activity of enzymes under mild conditions and the absence of harsh chemicals and byproducts used in chemical synthesis further emboldens this approach. Enzymes can be utilized to avoid the …
author: Kapoor, Iti
language: en
keywords: Roseoflavin, Avenolide, Protein crystallography
date published: 2019-02-08T18:39:37Z
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:42Z
provider: University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/102883