Microbial Bioactives
Microbial Bioactives | Online ISSN 2209-2161
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Volume 6 Number 1 2023
REVIEWS (Open Access)
Rediscovering Nature’s Pharmacy: A Systematic Review Perspective on Modern Antibiotic Discovery Amid Escalating Antimicrobial Resistance
Wan Nur Ismah Wan Ahmad Kamil 1*
Microbial Bioactives 6 (1) 1-8 https://doi.org/10.25163/microbbioacts.6110667
Submitted: 13 November 2022 Revised: 15 January 2023 Accepted: 25 January 2023 Published: 27 January 2023
Abstract
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has emerged as a defining global health crisis, threatening the effectiveness of modern medicine and undermining decades of therapeutic progress. The stagnation of antibiotic discovery—driven largely by the repeated rediscovery of known compounds from traditional soil-based sources—has intensified the urgency to identify alternative reservoirs of antimicrobial novelty. In response, contemporary research has increasingly shifted toward underexplored ecological niches, particularly extreme environments and animal-associated microbiomes, where unique evolutionary pressures favor the production of potent defensive secondary metabolites.This study presents a systematic review and meta-analytic synthesis of antibiotic bioprospecting efforts across diverse ecological contexts, integrating data from marine sediments, plant-associated endophytes, rhizospheric soils, deep-sea sponges, and polar ecosystems. By quantitatively comparing bioactivity rates of microbial isolates against clinically relevant pathogens, the analysis reveals substantial variability in discovery success linked to ecological origin. Microbial communities derived from marine and host-associated environments consistently demonstrate higher proportions of bioactive isolates than those from conventional terrestrial sources, underscoring the value of targeting symbiotic and extreme niches. Beyond ecological comparisons, this review contextualizes recent methodological advances—including genomic and metagenomic mining, ultrahigh-throughput microfluidic screening, alternative cultivation strategies, and dereplication workflows—that collectively enhance discovery efficiency while reducing redundancy. The findings highlight how integrative, data-driven strategies aligned with a One Health framework can revitalize antibiotic discovery pipelines. Overall, this work provides evidence-based guidance for prioritizing future bioprospecting efforts and supports a paradigm shift toward ecologically informed, technologically enabled exploration of nature’s largely untapped antimicrobial potential.
Keywords: Antimicrobial resistance; antibiotic discovery; animal microbiomes; extreme environments; systematic review; meta-analysis; natural products; biosynthetic gene clusters
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