Bacterial natural products are a diverse and valuable group of small molecules, and genome sequencing indicates that the vast majority remain undiscovered.

The prediction of natural product structures from biosynthetic assembly lines can facilitate their discovery, but highly automated, accurate, and integrated systems are required to mine the broad spectrum of sequenced bacterial genomes.

Researchers present a genome-guided natural products discovery tool in the journal Nature Communications to automatically predict, combinatorialize and identify polyketides and nonribosomal peptides from biosynthetic assembly lines using LC–MS/MS data of crude extracts in a high-throughput manner.

They detail the directed identification and isolation of six genetically predicted polyketides and nonribosomal peptides using their Genome-to-Natural Products platform.

This highly automated, user-friendly programme provides a means of realizing the potential of genetically encoded natural products.