Abstract:Microbial natural products are important component of natural product derived drugs, and the excellent biological activities of natural products mainly depend on the pharmacophore groups with special structures. The biosynthesis of these special pharmacophores usually uses small molecules, like carbohydrates, amino acids and other simple primary metabolites. After specific and complex biosynthetic pathways, the simple metabolites were assembled to synthesize natural products with complex structures and diverse activities. Glutarimide containing natural products are an important class of natural products isolated from bacteria. As the potential lead compounds, they show excellent biological activity and have been developed as molecular probes. This article reviews the glutarimide containing natural products isolated from microorganisms and related biosynthetic pathways characterized in recent years, including iso-migrastatin, lactimidomycin, cycloheximide, streptimidone, gladiostatin, sesbanimide. Based on the biosynthetic study of glutarimide moiety, we expect to identify more glutarimide containing natural products through genome mining strategies.