Abstract
Over the past 50 years, more than 15 pharmaceuticals derived from marine organisms have come to the market. Most of these come from filter-feeding invertebrates that contain a high proportion of microbial symbionts. Microbiology and molecular genetic studies have shown that many of these drug-like compounds are produced by the microbial symbiont. The enzymes that produce these compounds are promiscuous meaning they can process a diverse range of related substrates, making them extremely attractive to the biotechnology industry. Determining the structure of these enzymes makes them amenable to engineering, allowing them to process non-natural substrates. Using this approach, synthetic substrates can be treated with a cocktail of enzymes to prepare focused libraries of compounds to hit drug targets such as protein–protein interactions. These targets are involved in a range of diseases from cancer to immune disorders and are hard to modulate using small molecule drugs.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 13-17 |
Number of pages | 5 |
Journal | Biochemist |
Volume | 44 |
Issue number | 2 |
Early online date | 24 Feb 2022 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Apr 2022 |