Extensive knowledge and methodological expertise on the bacterial cell biology have been accumulated over the last decades and bacterial cells have now become an integral part of several (bio-)technological processes. While it appears reasonable to focus on a relatively small number of fast-growing and genetically easily manipulable model bacteria as biotechnological workhorses, the for the most part untapped diversity of bacteria needs to be explored when it comes to bioprospecting for natural product discovery. Members of the underexplored and evolutionarily deep-branching phylum Planctomycetes have only recently gained increased attention with respect to the production of small molecules with biomedical activities, e.g. as a natural source of novel antibiotics. Next-generation sequencing and metagenomics can provide access to the genomes of uncultivated bacteria from sparsely studied phyla, this, however, should be regarded as an addition rather than a substitute for classical strain isolation approaches. Ten years ago, a large sampling campaign was initiated to isolate planctomycetes from their varied natural habitats and protocols were developed to address complications during cultivation of representative species in the laboratory. The characterisation of approximately 90 novel strains by several research groups in the recent years opened a detailed in silico look into the coding potential of individual members of this phylum. Here, we review the current state of planctomycetal research, focusing on diversity, small molecule production and potential future applications. Although the field developed promising, the time frame of 10 years illustrates that the study of additional promising bacterial phyla as sources for novel small molecules needs to start rather today than tomorrow.

在过去的几十年里，我们积累了关于细菌细胞生物学的广泛知识和方法学专业知识，现在细菌细胞已经成为几个（生物）技术过程的一个组成部分。虽然将相对少量的快速生长和遗传上易于操作的模型细菌作为生物技术主力似乎是合理的，但在生物勘探以发现天然产物时，需要探索大部分未开发的细菌多样性。在勘探不足和进化深分支门的成员浮霉菌门直到最近，在生产具有生物医学活性的小分子方面才受到越来越多的关注，例如作为新型抗生素的天然来源。下一代测序和宏基因组学可以提供对来自研究稀少的门的未培养细菌的基因组的访问，但是，这应该被视为对经典菌株分离方法的补充而不是替代。十年前，发起了一项大型采样活动，以将浮菌与其不同的自然栖息地隔离开来，并制定了协议以解决实验室培养代表性物种过程中的并发症。近年来，几个研究小组对大约 90 种新菌株的表征开启了对该门单个成员的编码潜力的详细计算机研究。这里，我们回顾了植物研究的现状，重点关注多样性、小分子生产和潜在的未来应用。尽管该领域发展前景广阔，但 10 年的时间框架表明，需要从今天而不是明天开始研究其他有前途的细菌门作为新型小分子的来源。