Exploring the biotechnological potential of Amazonian microorganisms through in silico genome analysis for detection of biosynthetic gene clusters

ABSTRACT The discovery of novel bioactive compounds has significant implications for diverse biotechnological applications. However, microbial genomes remain largely underexplored regarding their potential to produce secondary metabolites. Here, we explore the biotechnological potential of microorganisms from the highly biodiverse Amazon region through in silico genome mining. A total of 40 bacterial genomes originating from water, soil, and animal and plant-associated microorganisms were selected from a public database and analyzed using AntiSMASH and PRISM, predicting, respectively, 402 and 195 biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) related to secondary metabolite production. The most frequent BGCs were associated with polyketides, nonribosomal peptides, and ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptides, diverse classes of secondary metabolites commonly associated with biotechnological applications. To evaluate similarity with previously characterized clusters, the predicted BGCs were compared to entries in the MIBiG repository using BiG-SCAPE, revealing 12 clusters with close relationships to known BGCs. The remaining clusters showed low similarity, indicating that many potentially novel biosynthetic pathways remain uncharacterized, highlighting the limitations of current reference databases and the need for experimental validation. The results highlight the underexplored biotechnological potential of Amazonian microorganisms and reinforce the importance of expanding microbial genome sequencing and mining efforts in this biodiversity hotspot. The findings have significant implications for the discovery of novel bioactive compounds with diverse applications.