Establishment of an efficient transformation protocol and its application in marine-derived Bacillus strain.

Marine-derived Bacillus strains have been proved to be a very promising source for natural product leads. However, transformation of environmental strains is much more difficult than that of domesticated strains. Here, we report the development of an efficient and robust electroporation-based transformation system for marine-derived Bacillus marinus B-9987, which is a macrolactin antibiotics producer and a very promising biological control agent against fungal plant diseases.

[Advances on actinomycetic terpenoid biosynthesis].

Terpenoids are the most diverse class of natural products. Recently, a series of terpenoids with novel structures have been isolated from actinomyces. Their biosynthetic gene clusters have been identified and characterized either by direct cloning or genomic mining, which promoted investigations of their biosynthetic pathways, as well as the key enzymatic mechanisms.