Genome Biology

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Principles of microbial alchemy: insights from the Streptomyces coelicolor genome sequence

Charles J Thompson*, Doris Fink and Liem D Nguyen

Author Affiliations

Biozentrum, University of Basel, Division of Molecular Microbiology, 70 Klingelbergstrasse, 4056 Basel, Switzerland

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Genome Biology 2002, 3:reviews1020-reviews1020.4 doi:10.1186/gb-2002-3-7-reviews1020

Published: 26 June 2002

Abstract

The world's most creative producers of natural pharmaceutical compounds are soil-dwelling bacteria classified as Streptomyces. The availability of the recently completed Streptomyces coelicolor genome sequence provides a link between the folklore of antibiotics and other bioactive compounds to underlying biochemical, molecular genetic and evolutionary principles.