Unlocking Silent Biosynthetic Gene Clusters in Microbes to Accelerate the Discovery of Next Generation of New Antibiotics

Dear Colleagues,

Multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacterial infections have escalated in the community in recent years, even in sterile hospital environments. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic highlights the critical need for the rapid development of vaccines and antiviral treatments to reduce the numbers of hospitalizations and deaths. However, there is an even larger threat lurking behind the current outbreak that will complicate the care of many COVID-19 patients. It is the hidden threat from antibiotic resistance. Modern healthcare is increasingly confronted by MDR pathogens that are immune to most, even all, existing antibiotics. Confronted by the loss of the efficacy of existing antibiotic treatments, and the rising incidences of intractable infections and morbidity, there is an urgent need to discover new antibiotic classes not compromised by existing resistance mechanisms. Microorganisms produce a wealth of structurally diverse, specialised metabolites with a remarkable range of biological activities and a wide variety of applications in antibiotic biodiscovery. Microbial genomes are rich in silent biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) encoding defensive agents (i.e., antibiotics) that fail to be expressed under standard laboratory monoculture conditions, presumably due to the paucity of environmental cues. This Special Issue seeks manuscript submissions that introduce new approaches (such as co-cultures and the addition of small molecules) to unlocking these silent genes and discovering new antibiotic candidates.

Dr. Zeinab Khalil
Dr. Marcelo Marucci Pereira Tangerina
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Antibiotics is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Silent biosynthetic gene clusters
• microbes (bacteria and/or fungi)
• multi-drug resistance infections
• antibiotic resistance
• genomics
• new antibiotics candidates