OSMAC Strategy: An Affordable Method for the Discovery of New Microbial Compounds

Natural products from microbial origin have always been an abundant source of structurally diversified secondary metabolites, which have been used in the pharmaceutical, agrochemical, and food industries. Furthermore, the biotechnological potential of microorganisms is huge however, the quickness to discover new bioactive secondary metabolites has been slowing down due to the use of the same conventional cultivation and isolation procedures. Genomic studies have been shown of the secondary metabolites production on microorganisms is underestimated, there are many essential gene clusters for the biosynthesis of different classes of compounds, but they are silenced under cultivation conditions. Thus, new approaches were developed to improve the production of new bioactive metabolites by activating the silenced genes. The OSMAC (One Strain Many Compounds) strategy has been a simple and effective approach to activate new metabolic pathways, and consequently the synthesis of new secondary metabolites. Thus, the paper briefly presents the main concepts of the OSMAC strategy to induce the production of secondary metabolites that are not expressed in conventional laboratory culture conditions, and thus favour the discovery of new microbial natural products.