Interpretation will crack the microbial language code
Monday, June 30, 2014 - 06:00
in Biology & Nature
In the environment, microbes often communicate with each other using small molecules. Ribosomally synthesized and posttranslationally modified peptides produced by microbes represent a class of metabolites that are ecologically important and potentially involved in microbial communication. Currently, there is a need for more automated computational tools that not only predict outcomes based on microbial genome sequences, but also connect that information to knowledge about the chemical properties of microbial metabolites. This study introduces the first genome-mining tool that automates both the prediction and connection steps for modified-peptide discovery.