Whereas 77% of the marine Micrococcaceae in our study were shown to contain at least one class of NRPS and PKS “gene clusters” involved with the production of secondary metabolites, antimicrobial activity was detected from only 7% of the strains. It is accepted that the detection of secondary metabolites biosynthetic pathways may be used only as an indicator of the metabolic potential, and that the right cultivation conditions are still needed to express most of these pathways as well as the use of the appropriate targets to reveal the biological activity of the compounds [38]. In the experimental conditions used in our study, it has not been possible to establish any direct relationship between the presence of these specific secondary pathways and the production of antimicrobial activities