Natural Products Isolation and Characterization: Gene Independent Approaches

Abstract

Three eras can be defined in the history of natural product isolation and characterization for activity. Pre 1800, biologically active potions and impure infusions were the norm. In the 19th and 20th centuries pure molecules were isolated and structures determined without recourse to biosynthetic gene cluster information. In the post genomic era of the 21st century, bioinformatics and genome mining drive many of the decisions about which producer organisms to investigate. Single molecule X-ray analysis was crucial in the 1970s and 1980s for determination of complex molecular frameworks but has been largely superseded by modern NMR and mass spectrometry approaches. Observations that changing culture conditions in fungal and bacterial fermentations could radically alter the number and composition of natural products led to the concept of one strain many compounds (OSMAC) which prefigured genome sequencing results.