Diversity and Versatility of Actinomycetes and its Role in Antibiotic Production

Article history: Received on: 06/06/2013 Revised on: 27/06/2013 Accepted on: 14/08/2013 Available online: 18/09/2013 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.