Natural Products from Actinomycetes

This book provides in-depth information about the ecology, diversity and applications of Actinomycetes. The book is divided into two major parts. The first part discusses the diversity, chemical biology and ecology of Actinomycetes. It also covers the discovery of natural products from soil, endophytic and marine-derived Actinomycetes. It includes natural product discovery, chemical biology, new methods for discovering secondary metabolites, structure elucidation and biosynthetic research of natural products. The chapters in this part focus on the effects of biological and chemical elicitation at molecular level on secondary metabolism in Actinomycetes. The second part of the book discusses genomic and synthetic biology approaches in Actinomycetes drug discovery. This part includes chapters focused on the application of metabolic engineering to optimize natural product synthesis and the use of omics data in engineering of regulatory genes. It covers the advanced tools of synthetic biology and metabolic engineering including cluster assembly, CRISPR/Cas9 technologies, and chassis strain development for natural product overproduction in Actinomycetes. It describes the use of bioinformatics tools for reprogramming of biosynthetic pathways through polyketide synthase and non-ribosomal peptide synthetase engineering. These advanced genomic and molecular tools are expected to accelerate the discovery and development of new natural products from Actinomycetes with medicinal and other industrial applications. The book is useful to researchers and students in the field of microbiology, pharmaceutical sciences and drug discovery.

Ravishankar V. Rai received his MSc (1980) and PhD (1989) from the University of Mysore, India. Currently, he is working in the Department of Studies in Microbiology, University of Mysore, Mysore. His current research and publications in food microbiology, microbial quorum sensing, microbial influenced corrosion and nanotechnology have been well received by the international scientific committee. He edited books with reputed publishers such as CRC Press and Wiley publications.  Prof. Rai has received awards from UNESCO Biotechnology Action Council Programme (Visiting Fellow, 1996), UGC Indo-Israel Culture Exchange Programme (1998), DBT Overseas Fellowship (2008), Indo-Hungarian Educational Exchange Programme Fellowship (2011) and INSA – bilateral exchange fellowship (2015), Incoming Fellowship (2017) from Cardiff University in the UK, and invitation from Mauritius Research Council, Mauritius (2018), to conduct collaborative research with renowned scientists from internationaluniversities. He visited Massey University, New Zealand,under Eric Ojala fund International Travel Fellowship in 2019.

Jamuna A. Bai is working as an Assistant Professor in JSS Academy of Higher Education & Research, Mysore. She has completed MSc and PhD in Microbiology from University of Mysore, India. She pursued her PhD under the guidance of Dr. Ravishankar Rai V. Her doctoral research was funded by NMPB, Govt of India and Indian Council of Medical Research. As an ICMR Senior Research Fellow and for her doctoral research, she carried out studies on food safety, role of quorum sensing and biofilms in food-related bacteria and developed phytochemical based quorum-sensing inhibitors and anti-biofilm agents. She completed her post doctoral research in UGC sponsored University with Potential Excellence Project on synthesis and biological application of functionalized nanoparticles from University of Mysore. Her research work included application of functionalized nanomaterials and peptides as antimicrobials, biofilm inhibitors and anti-cancer agents. She has authored 30 research articles, reviews and book chapters and co-edited 6 books for CRC Press, USA . She has received grants and awards from IAFP, USA and ICFMH to present her research findings at international conferences. She has been awarded the Interstellar Initiative Early Career Investigator Funding jointly by the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED) and the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS) in 2021.