The chemistry of gliding bacteria

Abstract

Covering: up to November 2006

New microbial sources of natural products are urgently needed in order to find new structural classes and/or unique structural variations. Gliding bacteria, as found in the taxa Chloroflexi, Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes and Cyanobacteria, include members whose secondary metabolism is hardly investigated. Also, many of the members of these taxa have rather large genome sizes, pointing towards their potential to produce natural products. A general overview on the chemistry of gliding bacteria is currently hard to retrieve from the literature, and the compilation presented here is intended to highlight the metabolic versatility of these organisms.