Although metabolic pathway engineering for manipulation of secondary metabolite structure has been used extensively as a laboratory tool only relatively few examples have become industrially important partly because the methods have not been applicable to generation of large numbers of analogues in a parallel fashion or because changes have led to much reduced yields of the target molecules.

The presentation will review the pros and cons of different approaches which have been used for the genetic manipulation of lantibiotic structure and will introduce high throughput methods for structural modification. The consequence of structural changes on lantibiotic yields will also be addressed.