secondary metabolism, Natural Products, antibiotics, Mycotoxins, Fungi, Gene clusters, genome
Fungal natural products are friends and foes of humans such as deleterious mycotoxins, cytotoxic,
carcinogenic compounds or beneficial compounds such as antibiotics, fungicides, insecticides,
antiviral and antitumor metabolites. Understanding fungal diversity and estimation of fungal
species on our planet poses a great challenge to researchers. This complexity is further multiplied
by secondary metabolite diversity of fungi, which requires interdisciplinary studies. It is extremely
important to understand the fungal secondary metabolism to stop human, animal and plant
Frontiers in Microbiology 3 March 2017 | Fungal Jewels: Secondary Metabolites
diseases caused by fungi and harvest their valuable metabolites. Furthermore, many secondary
metabolite gene clusters are silenced under laboratory conditions. It is vital to develop effective
methods to activate those clusters in order to discover novel potent metabolites. This e-book
is a compilation of original review articles contributed by leading fungal secondary metabolite
researchers with a wide range of expertise. Important aspects of fungal secondary metabolism,
including regulation, genome mining, evolution, synthetic biology and novel methods have been
discussed. This book will be a great source to those people, who are interested in understanding
overall structure, diversity and regulation of production of these tiny but precious chemicals.