Themed collection Synthetic Biology and Bioinformatics

Huimin Zhao and Marnix Medema introduce the Natural Product Reports themed issue on ‘Synthetic biology and bioinformatics’.

Standardization is one of the foundational features of modern-day engineering, and the use of standardized parts and processes is a key element that distinguishes bona fide synthetic biology from traditional genetic engineering.

This highlight serves as a primer for those curious about the abilities of mass spectrometry for natural products discovery and engineering.

Bioinformatics tools facilitate and accelerate all steps along the Design–Build–Test cycle of synthetic biology, for the enhanced production of natural products in engineered microbes.

This Highlight examines current status of metabolic engineering and systems biology tools deployed for the optimal production of prokaryotic secondary metabolites.

This review summarizes the recent progress in heterologous phytochemical biosynthetic pathway reconstitution in plant, bacteria, and yeast, with a focus on the synthetic biology strategies applied in these engineering efforts.

Transcriptional activation of biosynthetic gene clusters.

The last decade has seen the first major discoveries regarding the genomic basis of plant natural product biosynthetic pathways.

This article reviews the development of genome mining strategies in bacteria during the last decade.

Microbial fermentation provides an attractive alternative to chemical synthesis for the production of structurally complex natural products.