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Biotechnological potential of actinomycetes in the 21st century: a brief review

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Abstract

This brief review aims to draw attention to the biotechnological potential of actinomycetes. Their main uses as sources of antibiotics and in agriculture would be enough not to neglect them; however, as we will see, their biotechnological application is much broader. Far from intending to exhaust this issue, we present a short survey of the research involving actinomycetes and their applications published in the last 23 years. We highlight a perspective for the discovery of new active ingredients or new applications for the known metabolites of these microorganisms that, for approximately 80 years, since the discovery of streptomycin, have been the main source of antibiotics. Based on the collected data, we organize the text to show how the cosmopolitanism of actinomycetes and the evolutionary biotic and abiotic ecological relationships of actinomycetes translate into the expression of metabolites in the environment and the richness of biosynthetic gene clusters, many of which remain silenced in traditional laboratory cultures. We also present the main strategies used in the twenty-first century to promote the expression of these silenced genes and obtain new secondary metabolites from known or new strains. Many of these metabolites have biological activities relevant to medicine, agriculture, and biotechnology industries, including candidates for new drugs or drug models against infectious and non-infectious diseases. Below, we present significant examples of the antimicrobial spectrum of actinomycetes, which is the most commonly investigated and best known, as well as their non-antimicrobial spectrum, which is becoming better known and increasingly explored.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Universidade Federal do Amazonas (UFAM) and the Programa de Pós-graduação em Biotecnologia and Biodiversidade da Amazonia for their support. This work was funded by the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Amazonas (FAPEAM) via the call 007/2021—Programa Biodiversa and project POSGRAD 2021/2022, and Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior—CAPES (Finance code 001). The authors also acknowledge the FAPEAM for the PhD scholarship awarded to Rafael de Souza Rodrigues and the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico – CNPq for the research grant awarded to ADLS.

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RSR: Conceptualization, Methodology, Reviews and Literature review; AQLS: Curatorship and Supervision; MDOF: Reviews and Literature review; TCL A: Reviews and Literature review; ANB: Revision and Editing; SRSSS: Revisions; ADLS: Curatorship and Supervision. This study is part of the doctoral thesis of Rafael de Souza Rodrigues.

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Correspondence to Rafael de Souza Rodrigues.

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de Souza Rodrigues, R., de Souza, A.Q.L., Feitoza, M.D.O. et al. Biotechnological potential of actinomycetes in the 21st century: a brief review. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek 117, 82 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10482-024-01964-y

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