Systems biology of cyanobacterial secondary metabolite production and its role in drug discovery.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Cyanobacteria continue to be an important source of compounds that show unprecedented biological activities of pharmaceutical interest. Cyanobacterial metabolites show an interesting and exciting range of biological activities ranging from antimicrobial and immunosuppressant to anticancer and anti-HIV. OBJECTIVE: This review explores the possibilities of applying systems biology approaches for harnessing these compounds as drug leads, primarily produced through large multimodular non-ribosomal peptide synthetase (NRPS), polyketide synthase (PKS) and mixed NRPS-PKS enzymatic systems. METHODS: A brief survey of the strategies for in silico analysis for drug target identification using genomic and high-throughput proteomics data, virtual screening and receptor-ligand docking based approaches are also discussed. CONCLUSION: We conclude with an outlook on how the field will evolve, especially in partnership with the new engineering-based, more endpoint exploitative paradigm of synthetic biology.