The generation of novel secondary metabolites through combinatorial biosynthesis

The search for natural products that have therapeutic or agrochemical uses was one of the founding technologies upon which many of the world's largest pharmaceutical and chemical companies were based. However, in the last twe nty years, this area of research has become increasingly more expensive and labour intensive. With the recent advent of high throughput screening the output from traditional natural products discovery groups has been incompat ible with the needs of screening groups. TerraGen Discovery Inc. is perfect ing techniques that will provide access to a greater range of biosynthetic diversity than has been previously sampled.