Metabolic Engineering to Synthetic Biology of Secondary Metabolites Production

Abstract

Abstract The microbial secondary metabolites have great importance for humans and agriculture. They are widely used as active drug ingredients in medicine (e.g., many antibiotics, antitumor agents, and antivirals are derived from secondary metabolites, as are antipyretics like aspirin, hallucinogenics like LSD, and cholesterol-lowering drugs like lovastatin), as herbicides or phytotoxins in agriculture, and as food additives (color, flavors, and sweeteners), fragrances, and even as precursors for the synthesis of plastics. Biotechnology has opened up new possibilities for potential applications of beneficial microbiomes producing secondary metabolites in agriculture, industrial, pharmaceuticals, and allied sectors. The microbes from diverse habitats including plant microbiomes (epiphytic, endophytic rhizospheric) and extreme microbiomes (psychrophilic, thermophilic, acidophilic, alkaliphilic, xerophilic, and halophilic) produce the necessary secondary metabolites for diverse applications. The present book chapter provides complete, comprehensive, and broad subject-based reviews on existing microbial biodiversity with the production of potential secondary metabolites for different biotechnological applications. Here we have also discussed metabolic engineering for the production of secondary metabolites from different groups of microbes including archaea, bacteria, and eukarya and their applications in agriculture, medicine, and industry.