Sporomusa sp. KB1 Genome sequencing and assembly. Sporomusa sp. KB1

Microbially derived secondary metabolites (also called natural products) remain an important source of medicines, agrichemicals, and tools for the study of basic cellular biochemistry. Rapid advances in our understanding of the molecular genetics of natural product biosynthesis have made it possible to decipher, at the DNA level, the coordinated steps that lead to the production of these highly complex and functionalized metabolites (Fischbach and Walsh, 2006). Secondary metabolites are produced through a series of enzymatic steps that catalyze the assembly of small organic building blocks, generally derived from primary metabolism, into more complex molecules that display an enormous array of structural diversity and biological function. The enzymes that build and functionalize these molecules often perform chemical reactions that are difficult to achieve or prohibitively expensive to perform using industrial-scale synthetic approaches. Today, it is possible to harness the enzymatic machinery responsible for natural product biosynthesis and exploit this metabolic potential for industrially useful processes including the redesign and manipulation of existing biological systems as part of the emerging science of synthetic biology.