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Actinomycetes: Microbiology to Systems Biology

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Actinobacteria

Abstract

Microbes are the prolific producers of bioactive compounds and their derivatives. More than half the number of versatile bioactive compounds from microbial sources have been produced by actinomycetes. Actinomycetes are remarkable sources of novel antibiotics and compounds which possess medical and industrial importance. This review outlines an introduction to actinobacteria with its diversity and distribution. It also discusses their unique characteristics as prokaryotic organisms, the bioactive molecules, their complex structures, and complicated bioactive molecules. This report summarizes the potential avenues in drug leads research of actinomycetes, we also explore the distinct self-resistant β-lactamase producers, polyketide and non-ribosomal polyketide synthase producers, isoprenoids, and protein inhibitors such as indolocarbazones, prodiginies, antiviral enzymes, antitumor enzymes, tyrosinases, and other hydrolytic enzymes such as amylases, cellulases, and xylanases that break down carbohydrates into sugars; chitinases, proteolytic enzymes like unhairing (nonspecific) and fibrin degrading (specific) proteases, and lipases. Furthermore, the array of actinomycete research has been driven by the break through in genomics and proteomics. Increasing new technical developments such as next-genome sequencing, genome editing, and analyzing secondary metabolite biosynthetic gene clusters (smBGCs) in genome mining which helps us to predict the domain organization of the gene clusters and synthesize new bioactive compounds. This chapter gives us the overall outlook of actinobacteria and its promising future prospects in the industrial and pharmaceutical fields when a hand-in-hand research is carried out with the help of bioinformatics.

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Correspondence to C. Subathra Devi .

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Subathra Devi, C., Merlyn Keziah, S., Jemimah Naine, S., Mohanasrinivasan, V. (2022). Actinomycetes: Microbiology to Systems Biology. In: Karthik, L. (eds) Actinobacteria. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5835-8_1

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