The role of genomics in antimicrobial discovery

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Abstract
The majority of today’s most effective classes of antimicrobials originated many decades ago as natural products isolated from soil-colonizing bacteria and fungi. Several of these antibiotics were amenable to semi-synthetic chemistry, and as a result the antimicrobial industry has excelled at fine-tuning these existing classes of antibiotics to improve their spectrum, efficacy and safety. Conversely, there are very few examples of novel synthetic antimicrobials. Linezolid, an oxazolidinone antimicrobial,1 represents the first significant synthetic compound class introduced to the market in >25 years, since compounds of the quinolone class were optimized into today’s very successful fluoroquinolones.2

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