Cyanobacteria Natural Products as Sources for Future Directions in Antibiotic Drug Discovery

Abstract

Cyanobacteria, an abundant source of natural products with a broad diversity of secondary metabolites, have emerged as a novel resource for the progression of synthetic analogs. Due to the rise of antibiotic resistance, there is a need for new medications and cyanobacteria-derived compounds have shown promising important alternatives for new therapeutics. These secondary metabolites are produced through nonribosomal peptide synthetase (NRPS), polyketide synthase (PKS), and mainly through mixed NRPS-PKS enzymatic systems. Current research is focused on the exploitation of cyanobacteria for the production of bioactive metabolites. Screening of cyanobacteria for pharmaceutically active compounds has received increasing attention; however, limited knowledge is available on biosynthetic mechanisms that would enhance the drug discovery process and culture-based production of desired metabolites. Overall, there is a promising outlook that cyanobacterial secondary metabolites will become alternatives for the development of new medications in a near future with enhanced pharmacological and pharmacokinetic properties. Keywords: