Recent Advances in Discovery, Bioengineering, and Bioactivity-Evaluation of Ribosomally Synthesized and Post-translationally Modified Peptides

Ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptides (RiPPs) are of increasing interest in natural products as well as drug discovery. This empowers not only the unique chemical structures and topologies in natural products but also the excellent bioactivities such as antibacteria, antifungi, antiviruses, and so on. Advances in genomics, bioinformatics, and chemical analytics have promoted the exponential increase of RiPPs as well as the evaluation of biological activities thereof. Furthermore, benefiting from their relatively simple and conserved biosynthetic logic, RiPPs are prone to be engineered to obtain diverse analogues that exhibit distinct physiological activities and are difficult to synthesize. This Review aims to systematically address the variety of biological activities and/or the mode of mechanisms of novel RiPPs discovered in the past decade, albeit the characteristics of selective structures and biosynthetic mechanisms are briefly covered as well. Almost one-half of the cases are involved in anti-Gram-positive bacteria. Meanwhile, an increasing number of RiPPs related to anti-Gram-negative bacteria, antitumor, antivirus, etc., are also discussed in detail. Last but not least, we sum up some disciplines of the RiPPs’ biological activities to guide genome mining as well as drug discovery and optimization in the future.