Chemical and Genetic Triggers of Secondary Metabolite Production

五十多年来，天然产物是新药的主要来源，在许多情况下，从隔离到临床使用，而无需修改。这些化合物大多数是从细菌和真菌中分离出来的，这是从地球仪的每个角落分离可培养菌株的大规模工业努力的产物。这项研究在20年前基本结束，部分原因是已知化合物不断重新分离的回报越来越少。新天然产物的缺乏对抗癌和抗生素研究的打击最大，因为大约40%和80%的小分子抗生素和抗癌药物是基于天然产物的。

For over fifty years natural products were the primary source of new drug leads, in many cases moving from isolation to clinic use without modification. Most of these compounds were isolated from bacteria and fungi, the product of a massive industrial effort to isolate cultivable strains from every corner of the globe. This search largely ended two decades ago, due in part to diminishing returns from continual re-isolation of known compounds. The absence of new natural products has hit anticancer and antibiotic research the hardest, as approximately 40% and 80% of small molecule antibiotics and anticancer drugs are natural product based.