scholarly journals Structure elucidation and biosynthesis of fuscachelins, peptide siderophores from the moderate thermophileThermobifida fusca

2008 ◽  
Vol 105 (40) ◽  
pp. 15311-15316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric J. Dimise ◽  
Paul F. Widboom ◽  
Steven D. Bruner

Bacteria belonging to the order Actinomycetales have proven to be an important source of biologically active and often therapeutically useful natural products. The characterization of orphan biosynthetic gene clusters is an emerging and valuable approach to the discovery of novel small molecules. Analysis of the recently sequenced genome of the thermophilic actinomyceteThermobifida fuscarevealed an orphan nonribosomal peptide biosynthetic gene cluster coding for an unknown siderophore natural product.T. fuscais a model organism for the study of thermostable cellulases and is a major degrader of plant cell walls. Here, we report the isolation and structure elucidation of the fuscachelins, siderophore natural products produced byT. fusca. In addition, we report the purification and biochemical characterization of the termination module of the nonribosomal peptide synthetase. Biochemical analysis of adenylation domain specificity supports the assignment of this gene cluster as the producer of the fuscachelin siderophores. The proposed nonribosomal peptide biosynthetic pathway exhibits several atypical features, including a macrocyclizing thioesterase that produces a 10-membered cyclic depsipeptide and a nonlinear assembly line, resulting in the unique heterodimeric architecture of the siderophore natural product.

mSphere ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark C. Walker

ABSTRACT Mark Walker studies the biosynthesis and engineering of bacterial natural products with the long-term goal of identifying new antibiotic compounds. In this mSphere of Influence, he reflects on how “Direct cloning and refactoring of a silent lipopeptide biosynthetic gene cluster yields the antibiotic taromycin A” by K. Yamanaka, K. A. Reynolds, R. D. Kersten, K. S. Ryan, et al. (Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 111:1957–1962, 2014, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1319584111) impacted his thinking on using synthetic biology approaches to study natural product biosynthesis.


Marine Drugs ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (7) ◽  
pp. 388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Li Liao ◽  
Shiyuan Su ◽  
Bin Zhao ◽  
Chengqi Fan ◽  
Jin Zhang ◽  
...  

Rare actinobacterial species are considered as potential resources of new natural products. Marisediminicola antarctica ZS314T is the only type strain of the novel actinobacterial genus Marisediminicola isolated from intertidal sediments in East Antarctica. The strain ZS314T was able to produce reddish orange pigments at low temperatures, showing characteristics of carotenoids. To understand the biosynthetic potential of this strain, the genome was completely sequenced for data mining. The complete genome had 3,352,609 base pairs (bp), much smaller than most genomes of actinomycetes. Five biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) were predicted in the genome, including a gene cluster responsible for the biosynthesis of C50 carotenoid, and four additional BGCs of unknown oligosaccharide, salinixanthin, alkylresorcinol derivatives, and NRPS (non-ribosomal peptide synthetase) or amino acid-derived compounds. Further experimental characterization indicated that the strain may produce C.p.450-like carotenoids, supporting the genomic data analysis. A new xanthorhodopsin gene was discovered along with the analysis of the salinixanthin biosynthetic gene cluster. Since little is known about this genus, this work improves our understanding of its biosynthetic potential and provides opportunities for further investigation of natural products and strategies for adaptation to the extreme Antarctic environment.


2015 ◽  
Vol 81 (13) ◽  
pp. 4339-4350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qi Zhang ◽  
James R. Doroghazi ◽  
Xiling Zhao ◽  
Mark C. Walker ◽  
Wilfred A. van der Donk

ABSTRACTLanthionine-containing peptides (lanthipeptides) are a rapidly growing family of polycyclic peptide natural products belonging to the large class of ribosomally synthesized and posttranslationally modified peptides (RiPPs). Lanthipeptides are widely distributed in taxonomically distant species, and their currently known biosynthetic systems and biological activities are diverse. Building on the recent natural product gene cluster family (GCF) project, we report here large-scale analysis of lanthipeptide-like biosynthetic gene clusters fromActinobacteria. Our analysis suggests that lanthipeptide biosynthetic pathways, and by extrapolation the natural products themselves, are much more diverse than currently appreciated and contain many different posttranslational modifications. Furthermore, lanthionine synthetases are much more diverse in sequence and domain topology than currently characterized systems, and they are used by the biosynthetic machineries for natural products other than lanthipeptides. The gene cluster families described here significantly expand the chemical diversity and biosynthetic repertoire of lanthionine-related natural products. Biosynthesis of these novel natural products likely involves unusual and unprecedented biochemistries, as illustrated by several examples discussed in this study. In addition, class IV lanthipeptide gene clusters are shown not to be silent, setting the stage to investigate their biological activities.


FEBS Letters ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 585 (21) ◽  
pp. 3446-3451 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yisheng Wu ◽  
Matthew L. Hillwig ◽  
Qiang Wang ◽  
Reuben J. Peters

2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (52) ◽  
pp. E11121-E11130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory C. A. Amos ◽  
Takayoshi Awakawa ◽  
Robert N. Tuttle ◽  
Anne-Catrin Letzel ◽  
Min Cheol Kim ◽  
...  

Bacterial natural products remain an important source of new medicines. DNA sequencing has revealed that a majority of natural product biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) maintained in bacterial genomes have yet to be linked to the small molecules whose biosynthesis they encode. Efforts to discover the products of these orphan BGCs are driving the development of genome mining techniques based on the premise that many are transcriptionally silent during normal laboratory cultivation. Here, we employ comparative transcriptomics to assess BGC expression among four closely related strains of marine bacteria belonging to the genusSalinispora. The results reveal that slightly more than half of the BGCs are expressed at levels that should facilitate product detection. By comparing the expression profiles of similar gene clusters in different strains, we identified regulatory genes whose inactivation appears linked to cluster silencing. The significance of these subtle differences between expressed and silent BGCs could not have been predicted a priori and was only revealed by comparative transcriptomics. Evidence for the conservation of silent clusters among a larger number of strains for which genome sequences are available suggests they may be under different regulatory control from the expressed forms or that silencing may represent an underappreciated mechanism of gene cluster evolution. Coupling gene expression and metabolomics data established a bioinformatic link between the salinipostins and their associated BGC, while genetic manipulation established the genetic basis for this series of compounds, which were previously unknown fromSalinispora pacifica.


Life ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 356
Author(s):  
Xiaohe Jin ◽  
Eric S. Miller ◽  
Jonathan S. Lindsey

Cyanobacteria are known as rich repositories of natural products. One cyanobacterial-microbial consortium (isolate HT-58-2) is known to produce two fundamentally new classes of natural products: the tetrapyrrole pigments tolyporphins A–R, and the diterpenoid compounds tolypodiol, 6-deoxytolypodiol, and 11-hydroxytolypodiol. The genome (7.85 Mbp) of the Nostocales cyanobacterium HT-58-2 was annotated previously for tetrapyrrole biosynthesis genes, which led to the identification of a putative biosynthetic gene cluster (BGC) for tolyporphins. Here, bioinformatics tools have been employed to annotate the genome more broadly in an effort to identify pathways for the biosynthesis of tolypodiols as well as other natural products. A putative BGC (15 genes) for tolypodiols has been identified. Four BGCs have been identified for the biosynthesis of other natural products. Two BGCs related to nitrogen fixation may be relevant, given the association of nitrogen stress with production of tolyporphins. The results point to the rich biosynthetic capacity of the HT-58-2 cyanobacterium beyond the production of tolyporphins and tolypodiols.


Marine Drugs ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 20
Author(s):  
Tiago Leão ◽  
Mingxun Wang ◽  
Nathan Moss ◽  
Ricardo da Silva ◽  
Jon Sanders ◽  
...  

Microbial natural products are important for the understanding of microbial interactions, chemical defense and communication, and have also served as an inspirational source for numerous pharmaceutical drugs. Tropical marine cyanobacteria have been highlighted as a great source of new natural products, however, few reports have appeared wherein a multi-omics approach has been used to study their natural products potential (i.e., reports are often focused on an individual natural product and its biosynthesis). This study focuses on describing the natural product genetic potential as well as the expressed natural product molecules in benthic tropical cyanobacteria. We collected from several sites around the world and sequenced the genomes of 24 tropical filamentous marine cyanobacteria. The informatics program antiSMASH was used to annotate the major classes of gene clusters. BiG-SCAPE phylum-wide analysis revealed the most promising strains for natural product discovery among these cyanobacteria. LCMS/MS-based metabolomics highlighted the most abundant molecules and molecular classes among 10 of these marine cyanobacterial samples. We observed that despite many genes encoding for peptidic natural products, peptides were not as abundant as lipids and lipopeptides in the chemical extracts. Our results highlight a number of highly interesting biosynthetic gene clusters for genome mining among these cyanobacterial samples.


Author(s):  
Rocky Chau ◽  
Leanne A. Pearson ◽  
Jesse Cain ◽  
John A. Kalaitzis ◽  
Brett A. Neilan

Pseudoalteromonas species produce a diverse range of biologically active compounds, including those biosynthesized by non-ribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPSs) and polyketide synthases (PKSs). Here we report the biochemical and genomic analysis of Pseudoalteromonas sp. HM-SA03, isolated from the blue-ringed octopus, Hapalochalaena sp. Genome mining for secondary metabolite pathways revealed seven putative NRPS/PKS biosynthesis gene clusters, including those for the biosynthesis of alterochromides, pseudoalterobactins, alteramides and four hitherto novel compounds. Among these was a novel siderophore biosynthesis gene cluster with unprecedented architecture (NRPS-PKS-NRPS-PKS-NRPS-PKS-NRPS). Alterochromide production in HM-SA03 was also confirmed by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. An investigation of the biosynthetic potential of 42 publicly available Pseudoalteromonas genomes indicated that some of these gene clusters are distributed throughout the genus. Through phylogenetic analysis, a particular subset of strains formed a clade with extraordinary biosynthetic potential, with an average density of ten biosynthesis gene clusters per genome. In contrast, the majority of Pseudoalteromonas strains outside this clade contained an average of three clusters encoding complex biosynthesis. These results highlight the under-explored potential of Pseudoalteromonas as a source of new natural products. Importance This study demonstrates that the Pseudoalteromonas strain, HM-SA03, isolated from the venomous blue-ringed octopus, Hapalochalaena sp., is a biosynthetically talented organism, capable of producing alterochromides and potentially six other specialized metabolites. We have identified a pseudoalterobactin biosynthesis gene cluster and proposed a pathway for the production of the associated siderophore. A novel siderophore biosynthesis gene cluster with unprecedented architecture was also identified in the HM-SA03 genome. Finally, we have demonstrated that HM-SA03 belongs to a phylogenetic clade of strains with extraordinary biosynthetic potential. While our results do not support a role of HM-SA03 in Hapalochalaena sp. venom (tetrodotoxin) production, they emphasize the untapped potential of Pseudoalteromonas as a source of novel natural products.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document