A review on bioprospecting of actinomycetes isolated from marine soil samples of India concerning their antimicrobial secondary metabolites

Abstract

Sixty-three years of research on terrestrial actinomycetes and forty-three years on marine actinomycetes in India yielded several novel actinomycetes species. Those actinomycetes were screened for their biological activities using culture filtrate/ crude solvent extracts. There are few reports on purifying and identifying secondary metabolites and exploring their biological activities. Actinomycetes are known for producing a diverse group of secondary metabolites with multiple biological activities. Omics technology has been currently used for rapid screening of actinomycetes genera to identify novel stains and their biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs). Only a few reports on using omics technology to explore actinomycetes' genera for novelty, their BGCs, secondary metabolites, and their biological activities in India have been available. Bioactivity-guided extraction, purification, and identification of secondary metabolites and scalable production of the bioactive compounds in the laboratory are time-consuming. Using omics technology to explore the actinomycetes isolated from several niches, including deep-sea sediments, would reduce the time required for screening and identification of novel BCGs and their metabolites. The growing microbial drug resistance to the existing antibiotics has increased the demand for newer antibiotics worldwide. This warranted the researchers to explore actinomycetes genera for novel antibiotics, bioactive compounds, and new chemical entities. Isolation of actinomycetes from unexplored and underexplored regions, screening followed by whole genome sequencing, annotation and identification of BGCs and their selective expression would help us produce a scalable quantity of novel bioactive compounds for biomedical applications.