Abstract:Natural products with remarkable biological activities from Streptomyces are important sources for drug discovery. The advancing sequencing technology has revealed the biosynthetic potential of Streptomyces. Most biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) in Streptomyces are at low expression levels or even in silence under routine laboratory conditions, which hinders the discovery of natural products. In situ activation and heterologous expression are effective ways for discovering natural products in Streptomyces, in which promoters as the “switch” of gene expression play a key role. Therefore, the study of promoters can promote the activation of BGCs for the mining of new natural products. We introduce Streptomyces promoters in terms of the structures, mining, design, and applications in natural product discovery. This review is expected to provide new insights and methodological references for the optimization of biosynthesis pathways and the discovery of new bioactive substances in Streptomyces.
