ABSTRACT
The key biomolecules that inhibit and thus regulate proteases are protease inhibitors. Beyond their importance in enzyme and structure studies, they have also been studied as potential drugs in recent years. An inhibition against several clinically critical pathogenic protease is their pharmacological significance. AIDS and hypertension have altered the perspective toward protease inhibitors in light of their clinical and commercial success. As part of this chapter, the authors discuss protease inhibitors originating from actinobacteria, a class of bacteria that produce a range of secondary metabolites. Actinobacteria-derived low-molecular-weight inhibitors of proteases, targeted at various classes of proteases that aid the onset and propagation of the pathological condition, are described. A couple rare actinobacteria are also involved in the production of protease inhibitors, even though Streptomyces sp. produces most of them.
