Meng Zhang: Key Laboratory of Combinatorial Biosynthesis and Drug Discovery, Ministry of Education, and School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430071, China.
Liyuan Kong: Key Laboratory of Combinatorial Biosynthesis and Drug Discovery, Ministry of Education, and School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430071, China.
Rong Gong: Key Laboratory of Combinatorial Biosynthesis and Drug Discovery, Ministry of Education, and School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430071, China.
Zixin Deng: Key Laboratory of Combinatorial Biosynthesis and Drug Discovery, Ministry of Education, and School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430071, China.
Wenqing Chen: Key Laboratory of Combinatorial Biosynthesis and Drug Discovery, Ministry of Education, and School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430071, China. wqchen@whu.edu.cn. ORCID
Epidemic diseases and antibiotic resistance are urgent threats to global health, and human is confronted with an unprecedented dilemma to conquer them by expediting development of new natural product related drugs. C-nucleoside antibiotics, a remarkable group of microbial natural products with diverse biological activities, feature a heterocycle base linked with a ribosyl moiety via an unusual C-glycosidic bond, and have played significant roles in healthcare and for plant protection. Elucidating how nature biosynthesizes such a group of antibiotics has provided the basis for engineered biosynthesis as well as targeted genome mining of more C-nucleoside antibiotics towards improved properties. In this review, we mainly summarize the recent advances on the biosynthesis of C-nucleoside antibiotics, and we also tentatively discuss the future developments on rationally accessing C-nucleoside diversities in a more efficient and economical way via synthetic biology strategies.
