天然产物的生物合成专刊序言

Preface to the special issue: biosynthesis of natural products

天然产物是创新药物、食品、香料和日化产品等的重要来源,和人民的健康生活息息相关。近年来,随着现代生物学技术和天然产物化学技术的发展和融合,天然产物生物合成研究得到了迅猛的发展。一批天然产物的生物合成途径被解析,许多天然产物生物合成相关的途径酶与后修饰酶被挖掘和功能表征。进一步,这些参与天然产物生物合成的途径酶编码基因被组装到不同的底盘细胞中,利用合成生物学技术构建细胞工厂,用于天然产物的生物合成。此外,包括基因组编辑等新技术在内的生物技术也被用于天然产物的生物合成。为了进一步促进天然产物生物合成研究的发展,《生物工程学报》特组织出版"天然产物的生物合成"专刊,重点阐述了在天然产物生物合成途径的解析,工具酶的挖掘和功能表征以及生物合成技术制备天然产物三方面所取得的研究进展,并展望未来的发展趋势,为天然产物生物合成的进一步发展提供借鉴和指导。

Natural products, important sources of innovative drugs, food, spices and daily chemicals, are closely related to people’s healthy life. With the development and integration of modern biological and chemical technologies of natural products, the researches on biosynthesis of natural products have made great progresses in recent years. The biosynthetic pathways of a number of natural products have been analyzed. Many pathway enzymes and modifying enzymes involved in the biosynthesis of natural products have been mined and functionally characterized. Furthermore, genes encoding pathway enzymes have been introduced into chassis to construct cell factories producing natural products through synthetic biology technologies. Also, other biotechnologies including genome editing and genome mining, have been used in the biosynthesis of natural products. In order to further promote the development of researches on biosynthesis of natural products, we edited a Special Issue on the topic of "biosynthesis of natural products", focusing on the researches progress in three aspects: the analysis of biosynthetic pathways of natural products, genome-wide mining and functional characterization of genes encoding tool enzymes, and the scale preparation of natural products by biosynthetic technology. Also included in this Special Issue was the prospect of the biosynthesis of natural products. This Special Issue can provide reference and guidance for the further development of natural product biosynthesis.