“Omics” represent a combinatorial approach to high-throughput analysis of biological entities for various purposes. It broadly encompasses genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, lipidomics, and metabolomics. Bacteria and microalgae exhibit a wide range of genetic, biochemical and concomitantly, physiological variations owing to their exposure to biotic and abiotic dynamics in their ecosystem conditions. Consequently, optimal conditions for adequate growth and production of useful bacterial or microalgal metabolites are critically unpredictable. Traditional methods employ microbe isolation and ‘blind’-culture optimization with numerous chemical analyses making the bioprospecting process laborious, strenuous, and costly. Advances in the next generation sequencing (NGS) technologies have offered a platform for the pan-genomic analysis of microbes from community and strain downstream to the gene level. Changing conditions in nature or laboratory accompany epigenetic modulation, variation in gene expression, and subsequent biochemical profiles defining an organism’s inherent metabolic repertoire. Proteome and metabolome analysis could further our understanding of the molecular and biochemical attributes of the microbes under research. This review provides an overview of recent studies that have employed omics as a robust, broad-spectrum approach for screening bacteria and microalgae to exploit their potential as sources of drug leads by focusing on their genomes, secondary metabolite biosynthetic pathway genes, transcriptomes, and metabolomes. We also highlight how recent studies have combined molecular biology with analytical chemistry methods, which further underscore the need for advances in bioinformatics and chemoinformatics as vital instruments in the discovery of novel bacterial and microalgal strains as well as new drug leads.

Campylobacter jejuni is a leading foodborne cause of gastroenteritis, but genomic surveillance remains uneven across Africa. A recent East Africa study combined whole-genome sequencing and antimicrobial susceptibility testing for Campylobacter isolates from humans with diarrhea in Kenya and poultry in Tanzania, showing high sequence-type diversity and substantially higher multidrug resistance in poultry. We extended this regional evidence by analyzing 1,013 publicly available C. jejuni genomes, including 718 African and 295 non-African comparator genomes, with standardized assembly, genotyping, phylogenomics, pangenome reconstruction, antimicrobial resistance, virulence, and mobile-element profiling. African genomes were geographically concentrated but genetically diverse, included globally distributed and regionally enriched lineages, and showed an open pangenome dominated by low-frequency gene families. Resistance and virulence determinants were unevenly distributed by region and lineage. These findings place African C. jejuni diversity within a global evolutionary framework and support expanded, integrated One Health genomic surveillance.

Unpredictable emerging and re-emerging of Mpox virus (MPXV) outbreaks account for urgent interventions. While no drug has been approved for Mpox treatment, repurposing of nucleoside analog drugs such as tecovirimat and cidofovir is the current focus of many intervention initiatives. Intrigued by their molecular structural similarities, we hypothesized that acyclovir, allopurinol, and B vitamins, which structurally resemble tecovirimat and cidofovir, could be competitive inhibitors of the MPXV DNA polymerase, abrogating DNA synthesis viral multiplication. We applied computational molecular docking experiments to investigate this hypothesis. Our results revealed that acyclovir fits exactly into the binding cavity for cidofovir and interacts with the same MPXV DNA polymerase amino acid residues with comparatively similar binding energy. We also found that oxipurinol (a metabolite of allopurinol) expresses higher affinity for MPXV DNA polymerase than cidofovir. Interestingly, the B vitamins riboflavin and folic acid outcompeted cidofovir, acyclovir and deoxyribonucleoside triphosphates (dNTPs), the natural substrates for DNA polymerase. From these ligand-receptor interactions we infer that acyclovir, oxipurinol and B vitamins are competitive inhibitors, targeting the active rather than the allosteric site of MPXV DNA polymerase. Our findings provide a novel insight into the B vitamin’s mode of action, emphasizing their antiviral potential via direct hijacking of the viral DNA replication machinery. While B vitamins are easy to find and cheaper, wet laboratory studies equipped with bioinformatics capacity could validate our findings to drive clinical trials. Once well established, B vitamins can be a cheap and reliable venture for pandemic preparedness for viral outbreaks.