ABSTRACT
This review summarizes about the actinomycetes and their capability to produce bioactive secondary metabolites, many of which have been successfully isolated and turned into useful drugs and other organic chemicals. Microbial pathogens are becoming increasingly resistant to available treatments so new antibiotics are needed, but the channel of compounds under development is scarce. There is frantic need of new microbial agents to fight against the antibiotic resistant strains of pathogenic microorganisms, which are rapidly increasing gradually. Therefore, actinomycetes hold a prominent position due to their diversity and proven ability to produce new bioactive compounds predominantly used in antibiotic production. A critical element in a drug discovery based on microbial extracts is the isolation of unexploited groups of microorganisms that are at the same time good producers of secondary metabolites. Few of the antibiotics produced by actinomycetes are included in this review along with their activities to prove the versatility of this powerful microbial organism. Many ecological niches still remain unexplored yet which needs to be studied for a greater diversity of novel actinomycetes. Different strains of actinomycetes generally produce different compounds. For this reason intensive efforts can be increased for isolation and screening of new strains to discover new compounds.
ABSTRACT
The class of Actinobacteria is a large group of gram-positive bacteria and having high G+C content. Actinobacteria also produced curious compound like thiols mainly Mycothiol (MSH) and Glutathione (GSH). MSH is also known as mycothiol and comprised of a cysteine residue with an acetylated amino group which is linked to glucosamine to inositol but Glutathione (GSH) having gamma peptide linkage between cysteine group which is attached by normal peptide linkage to a glycine and the carboxyl group of the glutamate side-chain. These thiols play a key role in maintaining a reducing environment in the cell, which is necessary for regular metabolic activities and represent adaptation under stress condition for survival of organisms. Both Mycothiol and glutathione (GSH) having property to protect cells against oxygen toxicity but MSH shows 7 fold slower ability to resistance of autoxidation compare to GSH but GSH is absent in archaebacterium and rarely found in Streptomycetes strains (Streptomyces lactamdurans). In this review article we discussed about the GSH and MSH structure, properties and how GSH is better than MSH in the case of antioxidant production.