Discussion

Natural products represent a treasure trove of medicinally relevant compounds: over the past 3 decades over 70% of antimicrobials and over 60% of antitumor agents entering clinical trials have been based on natural products.
Generation of natural product analogues is an important area and is key to understanding structure activity relationships and improving physicochemical properties. Traditional approaches of analogue generation such as total synthesis and semisynthesis have limitations. We have pioneered a new concept in which a gene is introduced to an organism and coerced to work in concert with an existing biosynthetic pathway. This installs a chemical handle that enables selective derivatisation of the natural product