Prokaryotic microorganisms constitute the major portion of biomass and represent the largest pool of untapped genetic and biochemical diversity on Earth. Estimates place the number of these microbial cells at approximately 5 x 1030. The total mass of carbon in this very large number of cells is equal to that of all plants on Earth, and the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus fixed in microbial biomass is ten times that of all plant biomass. Yet, one of the great anomalies that has emerged from recent analyses of microbial abundance and distribution is that less than 1% of all microbes are currently in cultivation and have been analyzed as potential sources of therapeutics with possible human health benefit. Even from this small set of microbes that can be cultivated in laboratories, over 17,000 antibiotics and other biologically active microbial metabolites have been isolated. Thus, taken together, the preceding considerations argue that a potentially vast array of novel biochemical pathways, novel genetic capabilities, novel enzymatic transformations, and novel secondary metabolites exists in this pool of yet-to-be-cultivated microbes. Moreover, the advent of a new generation of molecular tools allows us to screen microbes, microbial genes and microbial activities in natural habitats.

The above considerations are what underlie and motivate the research that will be described in this lecture. At its most elementary, my conceptual paradigm is that "undiscovered novel microbes or microbial gene clusters = potentially novel chemistry." To address this, I will focus on a bioprospecting research and screening program that is being undertaken in the highly diverse ecological zones of Uzbekistan and Krygyzstan, in Central Asia.

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