Ecological context for bacterial natural products discovery

Abstract

Covering: This review covers literature from 2015 to present.

It is widely recognised that there is a significant gap between bacterial natural product potential and detected/described products. As such, there are several recent reviews on elicitation strategies for natural products discovery, which are often laboratory focused. Recently, a move to more ecology-focused approaches to understand the function of metabolites in nature and what impacts expression has been a growing trend. In this review, we aim to capture work done that goes beyond laboratory conditions and address ecological studies focussed on what impacts bacterial chemistry, covering both abiotic and biotic influences. We aim to touch on the impact of biodiversity loss, changes in ecosystems and future climate parameters and the implications this will have on natural products chemistry and biodiscovery efforts, the scale and consequences of which are not known.