2016 SIMB Annual Meeting and Exhibition

Novel natural product chemical scaffolds continue to provide access to important antimicrobial agents, immunomodulators, antitumor agents and other biologically active molecules. Natural product discovery is currently undergoing a renaissance due to a large extent on observations from pure genome and metagenome sequencing and powerful bioinformatic tools.  This new information is showing that only a fraction of the potential microbial secondary metabolites encoded by diverse bacteria and fungi have been discovered.  As genome mining has emerged and expanded, it is enabling new ways to increase access to and understanding of novel natural product biosynthetic systems. This session will encompass several fascinating topics on natural product biosynthetic pathways including new biochemical mechanisms, and diverse applications of key enzymes involved in tailoring of complex metabolites.