ABSTRACT
Fungi are one of the richest sources of secondary metabolites of importance to humans [1-4]. Since the discovery and development of penicillin, tremendous effort has been directed toward production of, and screening for, fungal secondary metabolites. Traditional strain-improvement approaches usually include selecting strains with desired traits from mutagenesis programs and screening these strains for novel compounds [5]. These strategies have been invaluable for increasing production of fungal secondary metabolites, but are time consuming and labor intensive and cannot be relied on for rapid improvement of desired traits [6]. The development of recombinant DNA technologies and high-throughput transcript-, protein-, and metabolite-profiling technologies and the rapid accumulation of fungal genomic sequences provide new and important tools for redirecting metabolic pathways and obtaining superior yields of secondary metabolites.
