Abstract:Most of the antibiotics used to treat diseases are derived from natural products produced during microbial secondary metabolism. Given a strong cytotoxicity, the compound producers have to evolve effective self-resistance to avoid suicide when they synthesize these natural products. Herein, we review the recent research progress on DNA damage repair as a self-resistance strategy of natural product producing bacteria, especially those obtained from the base excision repair and nucleotide excision repair pathway in DNA damage antibiotics producers. Furthermore, the existing problems and the application perspective of the DNA damage repair mechanism in self-resistance are discussed.