Two review papers, eight research articles, and one brief report were published in this Special Issue. They showed the rich resources that are present within the genomes of marine microorganisms and discussed the use of recently developed tools and technologies to exploit this genetic richness. Examples include the rational supply of precursors according to the relevant biosynthetic pathway and stress driven discovery together with the use of histone deacetylase inhibitors to facilitate the discovery of new bioactive molecules with potential biopharmaceutical applications. We believe that the content of this Special Issue reflects the current state-of-the-art research in this area and highlights the interesting strategies that are being employed to uncover increasing numbers of exciting novel compounds for drug discovery from marine genetic resources.

Two review papers, eight research articles, and one brief report were published in this Special Issue. They showed the rich resources that are present within the genomes of marine microorganisms and discussed the use of recently developed tools and technologies to exploit this genetic richness. Examples include the rational supply of precursors according to the relevant biosynthetic pathway and stress driven discovery together with the use of histone deacetylase inhibitors to facilitate the discovery of new bioactive molecules with potential biopharmaceutical applications. We believe that the content of this Special Issue reflects the current state-of-the-art research in this area and highlights the interesting strategies that are being employed to uncover increasing numbers of exciting novel compounds for drug discovery from marine genetic resources.

In recent years, marine genomics has become a rapidly growing field, helped by the large amount of information that is becoming available to the international scientific community. Taking into account the current excitement in the field of marine biotechnology, this Special Issue entitled “Genome Mining and Synthetic Biology in Marine Natural Product Discovery” aims to to assess the impact of these molecular approaches on the discovery of bioactive compounds from marine organisms. The term “genome mining” is used to identify all bioinformatic investigations aimed at detecting the biosynthetic pathways of bioactive natural products and their possible functional and chemical interactions. Several studies are now reporting on marine organisms. Oceans cover nearly 70% of the Earth’s surface and host a huge ecological, chemical, and biological diversity. The natural conditions of the sea favor, in marine organisms, the production of a large variety of novel molecules with great pharmaceutical potential. Marine organisms are unique in their structural and functional features compared to terrestrial ones. Innovation in this field is very rapid, as revealed by the funding of several Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) and Horizon 2020 projects under the topic “Blue Growth”, with the urgent goal of discovering new drugs.

In recent years, marine genomics has become a growning rapidly field, helped by the large amount of information that is becoming available to the international scientific community. Taking into account the current excitement in the field of marine biotechnology, this Special Issue entitled “Genome Mining and Synthetic Biology in Marine Natural Product Discovery” aims to to assess the impact of these molecular approaches on the discovery of bioactive compounds from marine organisms. The term “genome mining” is used to identify all bioinformatic investigations aimed at detecting the biosynthetic pathways of bioactive natural products and their possible functional and chemical interactions. Several studies are now reporting on marine organisms. Oceans cover nearly 70% of the Earth's surface and host a huge ecological, chemical, and biological diversity. The natural conditions of the sea favor, in marine organisms, the production of a large variety of novel molecules with great pharmaceutical potential. Marine organisms are unique in their structural and functional features compared to terrestrial ones. Innovation in this field is very rapid, as revealed by the funding of several Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) and Horizon 2020 projects under the topic “Blue Growth”, with the urgent goal of discovering new drugs.

Nature has created elegant and efficient ways of assembling a wide variety of diverse chemical scaffolds. Microbes are prolific producers of these secondary metabolites, which can have profound bioactivities and be harnessed for use in medicine. Within their genomes, microbes possess the blueprints for making natural products, and recent advances in high-throughput DNA sequencing have revealed a much larger repertoire of specialized chemistry than what can be observed in the lab. This bacterial 'dark matter' has the potential to contain the instructions for making countless new chemical scaffolds and represents an untapped source for drug discovery. Connecting secondary metabolite compounds with their biosynthetic gene clusters can inform novel biosynthetic transformations, provide a renewable source of promising bioactive compounds, and inspire synthetic biology approaches to assembling new molecules. Chapter 2 of this dissertation connects two pharmaceutically relevant natural products with their corresponding biosynthetic gene clusters. The epoxyketone proteasome inhibitors epoxomicin and eponemycin are naturally produced by actinomycete bacteria, and whole genome sequencing revealed their genetic underpinnings and native resistance mechanism. This work represents the first elucidation of biosynthetic gene clusters for epoxyketone proteasome inhibitors. Chapter 3 takes a wider lens to examine an understudied group of bacteria: the rare marine actinomycetes. Whole genome sequencing of a group of rare marine actinomycetes revealed an incredible wealth of biosynthetic potential and diversity not yet represented in current sequencing databases. This study establishes rare marine actinomycetes as a group worthy of further exploration for genome mining and drug discovery. Chapter 4 investigates a more complex system with a focus on uncultivatable cyanobacterial sponge symbionts. Previous work showed that the genomes of these symbionts contained the genes necessary to produce environmentally relevant poly-brominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs). In assembling high quality draft genomes of two symbionts of distinct sponges, their full secondary metabolite potential was revealed. Additionally, genome mining led to the identification of two novel dysinosin molecules, representing the first example of mining for gene clusters in a metagenome assembled genome leading to new chemistry.

Dramatic developments in understanding the fundamental underpinnings of life have provided exciting opportunities to make marine bioproducts an important part of the U.S. economy. Several marine based pharmaceuticals are under active commercial development, ecosystem health is high on the public's list of concerns, and aquaculture is providing an ever greater proportion of the seafood on our tables. Nevertheless, marine biotechnology has not yet caught the public's, or investor's, attention. Two workshops, held in October 1999 and November 2001 at the National Academies, were successful in highlighting new developments and opportunities in environmental and biomedical applications of marine biotechnology, and also in identifying factors that are impeding commercial exploitation of these products. This report includes a synthesis of the 2001 sessions addressing drug discovery and development, applications of genomics and proteomics to marine biotechnology, biomaterials and bioengineering, and public policy and essays contributed by the workshop speakers.