Microbial Cell Factories invites you to read our collection featuring Microbial synthesis of natural products originating from medicinal plants and fungi. The medicinal and nutritional value of medicinal plants and fungi are generally represented by the accumulation of bioactive molecules that are in large part constituted by secondary metabolites with anti-cancer, hypoglycemic and antioxidant activities. The discovery of these biosynthetic pathways relies on the genomic and transcriptomic, metabolomic information. An omics strategy has been applied to accelerate the progress of pathway dissection for many important bioactive compounds, for example, ginsenoside, vinblastine, artemisinin and cannabinoids.
Bioactive compounds (terpenoids, flavonoids, and alkaloids) are gaining interest for nutrition and drug discovery. Such bioactive compounds are found at low concentration in their natural sources, so that dissecting their biosynthetic pathways is of value for their production through heterologous biosynthesis in engineered prokaryotic microbes and fungi, such as E. coli and yeast. To achieve microbial production at industrial scale, synthetic biology principles must be applied for improvement of productivity, titer and yield.
Guest Editors: Prof Mingfeng Cao, Xiamen University, Prof. Zheyong Xue, Northeast Forestry University, Prof. Jifeng Yuan, Xiamen University
