摘要
The sudden outbreak of COVID-19 clearly illustrates a complicated public health issue of global medicine shortages.We should not forget that besides the shortage of antivirals and vaccines there also is a lack of incentives for developing many other drugs,for example,antibiotics.Natural products produced by bacteria,fungi,and plants are one of the most important resources used by us for millennia.They have been developed as medicines,food additives,industrial materials,and so on.It is noteworthy that more than half of our antibiotics and anti-tumor drugs currently used in clinics are from natural products of Actinomyces,a group of gram-positive bacteria.Sadly,after the golden age of natural products research in the 1950s–1960s,the speed and outputs of natural products research have been dramatically slowing down.With advances in all aspects of biotechnology,we now are able to access natural products that were considered to be inaccessible.A gold mine is hidden in the genetic information of both culturable and unculturable microorganisms,waiting for us to exploit it.
