Themed collection Emerging Investigator Review series

Histidine-containing crosslinks are important structural motifs found in natural cyclic peptides of both ribosomal and non-ribosomal origin. Their formation involves intricate enzymatic chemistry.

This review covers diverse transcriptional regulators for the activation of secondary metabolism and novel natural product discovery in fungi.

This article reviews CRISPR/Cas9-based toolkits available to investigate natural product biosynthesis and regulation in streptomycete bacteria.

Subterranean microbial communities possess unique and untapped biosynthetic potential.

The review is on synthesis of different classes of isoflavonoids that include isoflavones, isoflavanones, isoflavans, isoflavenes, pterocarpans, rotenoids, coumaronochromones, and coumestans.

This review mainly focuses on the essential roles of thioesterase and condensation domains in fungal macrolide biosynthesis and their chemoenzymatic applications. It also discusses the differences in ester bond formation between fungi and bacteria.

Synthetic-bioinformatic natural product inspired peptides (syn-BNPs) are predicted peptides from biosynthetic gene clusters that are synthetically accessed. This method enables easier access to natural product-like peptides for bioactivity screening.

This review highlights methods for studying structure activity relationships of natural products and proposes that these methods are complementary and could be used to build an iterative computational-experimental workflow.

Ribosomally synthesised and post-translationally modified peptides (RiPPs) are highly promising candidates for drug discovery and development, but challenges remain.

The discovery and characterization of natural product protease inhibitors has inspired the development of numerous pharmaceutical agents.

This review on natural products containing a tropolonoid motif highlights analytical methods applied for structural identification and biosynthetic pathway analysis, the ecological context and the pharmacological potential of this compound class.

Enzymes that catalyze a Michael-type addition in polyketide biosynthesis are summarized and discussed.