Taifo Mahmud
Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331, U.S.A.
Natural products continue to play an important role in drug discovery. About two-thirds of recently approved pharmaceuticals are natural products, botanicals, natural product-derivatives, or natural product-inspired synthetic compounds. Plants, marine animals, algae, and microorganisms are known to be prolific sources of bioactive natural products. Despite their enormous potential, the number of new natural products identified in recent years has significantly declined. This trend has called for alternative approaches to drug discovery and development. Among them is the application of biotechnology to identify and/or generate novel bioactive natural products and their derivatives. Examples of biotechnological tools available for natural product-based discovery include genome mining, biosynthetic pathway engineering, biotransformation, and synthetic biology. Combinations of these cutting-edge technologies and state-of-the-art instrumentations may accelerate the discovery of new natural products.