Coupling Proteomics and Fermentation Technology for the Improvement of Bioactive Molecule Production Yield in Actinomycetes

Abstract

Copyright: © 2013 Gallo. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Most bioactive molecules (like anticancers, antitumors, antibiotics, immunosuppressants, insecticidals, antivirals, herbicidals, antifungals) with valuable industrial and market value are naturally produced by actinomycetes [1-4], Gram-positive filamentous bacteria widespread in both terrestrial and aquatic environments [5,6]. Out of thousands of bioactive molecules, also known as secondary metabolites since they are not essential for actinomycete growth in standard laboratory condition at least, more than 50% are synthesised by strains of Streptomyces genus [4]. Despite the cellular and ecological role of secondary metabolites is still debated [3,7], microbial fermentation is widely exploited to produce these compounds at industrial level. Although they have many different activities and range within a vast chemical complexity and diversity, there are two main common issues which could be addressed for the establishment of a cost-effective microbial fermentation process: