A phenazine-inspired framework for identifying biological functions of microbial redox-active metabolites
Abstract
While the list of small molecules known to be secreted by environmental microbes continues to grow, our understanding of their in situ biological functions remains minimal. The time has come to develop a framework to parse the meaning of these "secondary metabolites," which are ecologically ubiquitous and have direct applications in medicine and biotechnology. Here, we focus on a particular subset of molecules, redox active metabolites (RAMs), and review the well-studied phenazines as archetypes of this class. We argue that efforts to characterize the chemical, physical and biological makeup of the microenvironments, wherein these molecules are produced, coupled with measurements of the molecules' basic chemical properties, will enable significant progress in understanding the precise roles of novel RAMs.
Additional Information
© 2023 Elsevier. We thank current and former members of the Newman lab for carrying the RAM torch, for tenaciously pursuing how these versatile molecules interact with cells and impact their surroundings, and for making the quest fun along the way. We also appreciate constructive feedback on earlier versions of the manuscript from Avi Flamholz, John Ciemniecki and three anonymous reviewers. We thank the NIH (1R01AI127850-01A1) and the Doren Family Foundation for supporting our research. This research was also sponsored by the Army Research Office and was accomplished under Cooperative Agreement Number W911NF-22-2-0210. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the Army Research Office or the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute reprints for Government purposes notwithstanding any copyright notation herein. Author contributions. Korbinian Thalhammer: Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing-Original Draft, Visualization. Dianne Newman: Conceptualization, Writing-Review and Editing, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition. The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 121904
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20230615-473807000.4
- 1R01AI127850-01A1
- NIH
- Dhont Family Foundation
- W911NF-22-2-0210
- Army Research Office (ARO)
- Created
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2023-06-16Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2023-06-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, Division of Biology and Biological Engineering