Recent advances in screening of natural products for antimicrobial agents.

It has been a very long history for human to resist diseases. During this period, a large number of drugs that could kill or inhibit the growth of microbe has been discovered, most of which were natural products. However, there may still be a large amount of antimicrobial medicines in natural compounds which have not been found yet. The ways of screening for antimicrobial always cost a long time and need a lot of manpower before. However, in recent years, a lot of new antimicrobial targets, antimicrobial drugs and screening methods which are simpler, faster and more efficient have been invented. In this paper the newly discovered targets, natural products and representative technologies were reviewed, which were expected to make some contributions to the research and development of medicines.