Recent advance on the genus Saccharothrix

Abstract:

The genus Saccharothrix was established in 1984 by Labeda, a famous American taxonomist of actinobacteria. This genus is an important group of rare actinomycetes with filamentous hyphae, and most species have zigzag aerial hyphae during sporulation. They contained meso-diaminopimelic acid in cell wall, abundant phosphatidylethanolamine in phospholipids, MK-9(H₄) and MK-10(H₄) as the principal menaquinones, and the genus-specific motifs CAC (607–609) and GTG (617–619) in the 16S rRNA gene. Recent studies of genome mining have confirmed the existence of non-ribosomal peptide synthetase genes with high frequency in the genomes of Saccharothrix spp., which have the potential to produce structurally-novel secondary metabolites and enzyme products with diverse activities. Further, Saccharothrix can produce derivatives of known antibiotics or antibiotics with new structures, such as dithiopyrrolones, lactams, anthracyclines, and chloramphenicol, which have a great value in antiviral, antibacterial and antitumor treatment. Moreover, Saccharothrix serves as a new microbial resource for the production of industrial enzyme preparations, which has strong development potential in the application of enzyme preparations. New active enzymes such as chitinase and cellulase generated by the metabolism of Saccharothrix are widely used in modern agriculture, light industry and other fields. Owing to the unique genetic and metabolic diversity, Saccharothrix plays a key role in the degradation of organic pollutants and remediation of heavy metal pollution in soil. On the basis a novel species of Saccharothrix discovered by our laboratory and relevant literature, we reviewed the typical taxonomic characteristics, genomics, secondary metabolites, and enzyme development of Saccharothrix, aiming to provide a scientific basis for further mining the Saccharothrix strains with application potential.