scholarly journals Genomic charting of ribosomally synthesized natural product chemical space facilitates targeted mining

2016 ◽  
Vol 113 (42) ◽  
pp. E6343-E6351 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael A. Skinnider ◽  
Chad W. Johnston ◽  
Robyn E. Edgar ◽  
Chris A. Dejong ◽  
Nishanth J. Merwin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Products ◽  
Genome Sequencing ◽  
Sequence Data ◽  
Chemical Space ◽  
Biological Activities ◽  
Global Analysis ◽  
Gene Clusters ◽  
Systematic Investigation ◽  
Chemical Structures ◽  
Modified Peptides

Microbial natural products are an evolved resource of bioactive small molecules, which form the foundation of many modern therapeutic regimes. Ribosomally synthesized and posttranslationally modified peptides (RiPPs) represent a class of natural products which have attracted extensive interest for their diverse chemical structures and potent biological activities. Genome sequencing has revealed that the vast majority of genetically encoded natural products remain unknown. Many bioinformatic resources have therefore been developed to predict the chemical structures of natural products, particularly nonribosomal peptides and polyketides, from sequence data. However, the diversity and complexity of RiPPs have challenged systematic investigation of RiPP diversity, and consequently the vast majority of genetically encoded RiPPs remain chemical “dark matter.” Here, we introduce an algorithm to catalog RiPP biosynthetic gene clusters and chart genetically encoded RiPP chemical space. A global analysis of 65,421 prokaryotic genomes revealed 30,261 RiPP clusters, encoding 2,231 unique products. We further leverage the structure predictions generated by our algorithm to facilitate the genome-guided discovery of a molecule from a rare family of RiPPs. Our results provide the systematic investigation of RiPP genetic and chemical space, revealing the widespread distribution of RiPP biosynthesis throughout the prokaryotic tree of life, and provide a platform for the targeted discovery of RiPPs based on genome sequencing.

scholarly journals Uncovering Novel Peptide Chemistry from Bacterial Natural Products

2021 ◽  
Vol 75 (6) ◽  
pp. 543-547
Author(s):  
Florian Hubrich ◽  
Alessandro Lotti ◽  
Thomas A. Scott ◽  
Jörn Piel
Keyword(s):  
Natural Products ◽  
Bioactive Peptides ◽  
Biological Activities ◽  
Biological Properties ◽  
Post Translational Modifications ◽  
Peptide Chemistry ◽  
Chemical Structures ◽  
Therapeutic Value ◽  
Modified Peptides ◽  
Unique Chemical

Nature has evolved a remarkable array of biosynthetic enzymes that install diverse chemistries into natural products (NPs), bestowing them with a range of important biological properties that are of considerable therapeutic value. This is epitomized by the ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptides (RiPPs), a class of peptide natural products that undergo extensive post-translational modifications to produce structurally diverse bioactive peptides. In this review, we provide an overview of our research into the proteusin RiPP family, describing characterized members and the maturation enzymes responsible for their unique chemical structures and biological activities. The diverse enzymology identified in the first two proteusin pathways highlights the enormous potential of the RiPP class for new lead structures and novel pharmacophore-installing maturases as biocatalytic tools for drug discovery efforts.

scholarly journals Expanded Natural Product Diversity Revealed by Analysis of Lanthipeptide-Like Gene Clusters in Actinobacteria

2015 ◽  
Vol 81 (13) ◽  
pp. 4339-4350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qi Zhang ◽  
James R. Doroghazi ◽  
Xiling Zhao ◽  
Mark C. Walker ◽  
Wilfred A. van der Donk
Keyword(s):  
Natural Products ◽  
Natural Product ◽  
Gene Cluster ◽  
Posttranslational Modifications ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Biological Activities ◽  
Gene Clusters ◽  
Chemical Diversity ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Modified Peptides

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.

scholarly journals Heterologous production of cyanobacterial compounds

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dipesh Dhakal ◽  
Manyun Chen ◽  
Hendrik Luesch ◽  
Yousong Ding
Keyword(s):  
Natural Products ◽  
Genetic Engineering ◽  
Biological Activities ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Gene Clusters ◽  
Heterologous Production ◽  
Biosynthetic Gene Clusters ◽  
Chemical Structures ◽  
Host Genetic ◽  
Slow Growing

Abstract Cyanobacteria produce a plethora of compounds with unique chemical structures and diverse biological activities. Importantly, the increasing availability of cyanobacterial genome sequences and the rapid development of bioinformatics tools have unraveled the tremendous potential of cyanobacteria in producing new natural products. However, the discovery of these compounds based on cyanobacterial genomes has progressed slowly as the majority of their corresponding biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) are silent. In addition, cyanobacterial strains are often slow-growing, difficult for genetic engineering, or cannot be cultivated yet, limiting the use of host genetic engineering approaches for discovery. On the other hand, genetically tractable hosts such as Escherichia coli, Actinobacteria, and yeast have been developed for the heterologous expression of cyanobacterial BGCs. More recently, there has been increased interests in developing model cyanobacterial strains as heterologous production platforms. Herein, we present recent advances in the heterologous production of cyanobacterial compounds in both cyanobacterial and non-cyanobacterial hosts. Emerging strategies for BGC assembly, host engineering, and optimization of BGC expression are included for fostering the broader applications of synthetic biology tools in the discovery of new cyanobacterial natural products.

scholarly journals Mining of Cyanobacterial Genomes Indicates That Plasmids Are Involved in the Production of Natural Products

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafael Popin ◽  
Danillo Alvarenga ◽  
Raquel Castelo-Branco ◽  
David Fewer ◽  
Kaarina Sivonen
Keyword(s):  
Natural Products ◽  
Natural Product ◽  
Biological Activities ◽  
Gene Clusters ◽  
Biosynthetic Pathways ◽  
Biosynthetic Gene ◽  
Biosynthetic Gene Clusters ◽  
Chemical Structures ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Genes Encoding

Abstract Background Microbial natural products have unique chemical structures and diverse biological activities. Cyanobacteria commonly possess a wide range of biosynthetic gene clusters to produce natural products. Several studies have mapped the distribution of natural product biosynthetic gene clusters in cyanobacterial genomes. However, little attention has been paid to natural product biosynthesis in plasmids. Some genes encoding cyanobacterial natural product biosynthetic pathways are believed to be dispersed by plasmids through horizontal gene transfer. Thus, we examined complete cyanobacterial genomes to assess if plasmids are involved in the production and dissemination of natural products by cyanobacteria.Results The 185 analyzed genomes possessed 1 to 42 gene clusters and an average of 10. In total, 1816 biosynthetic gene clusters were found. Approximately 95% of these clusters were present in chromosomes. The remaining 5% were present in plasmids, from which homologs of the biosynthetic pathways for aeruginosin, anabaenopeptin, ambiguine, cryptophycin, hassallidin, geosmin, and microcystin were manually curated. The cryptophycin pathway was previously described as active while the other gene cluster include all genes for biosynthesis. Approximately 12% of the 424 analyzed cyanobacterial plasmids contained homologs of genes involved in conjugation. Large plasmids, previously named as “chromids”, were also observed to be widespread in cyanobacteria. Sixteen cryptic natural product biosynthetic gene clusters and geosmin biosynthetic gene clusters were located in those mobile plasmids.Conclusion Homologues of genes involved in the production of toxins, protease inhibitors, odorous compounds, antimicrobials, antitumorals, and other unidentified natural products are located in cyanobacterial plasmids. Some of these plasmids are predicted to be conjugative. The present study provides in silico evidence that plasmids are involved in the distribution of natural product biosynthetic pathways in cyanobacteria.

scholarly journals Current Advancements in Sactipeptide Natural Products

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yunliang Chen ◽  
Jinxiu Wang ◽  
Guoquan Li ◽  
Yunpeng Yang ◽  
Wei Ding
Keyword(s):  
Natural Products ◽  
Biological Activities ◽  
Cysteine Residue ◽  
Leader Peptide ◽  
Sequencing Technology ◽  
Chemical Structures ◽  
Precursor Peptide ◽  
Modified Peptides ◽  
Core Peptide ◽  
Alpha Carbon

Ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptides (RiPPs) are a growing class of natural products that benefited from genome sequencing technology in the past two decades. RiPPs are widely distributed in nature and show diverse chemical structures and rich biological activities. Despite the various structural characteristic of RiPPs, they follow a common biosynthetic logic: a precursor peptide containing an N-terminal leader peptide and a C-terminal core peptide; in some cases,a follower peptide is after the core peptide. The precursor peptide undergoes a series of modification, transport, and cleavage steps to form a mature natural product with specific activities. Sactipeptides (Sulfur-to-alpha carbon thioether cross-linked peptides) belong to RiPPs that show various biological activities such as antibacterial, spermicidal and hemolytic properties. Their common hallmark is an intramolecular thioether bond that crosslinks the sulfur atom of a cysteine residue to the α-carbon of an acceptor amino acid, which is catalyzed by a rSAM enzyme. This review summarizes recent achievements concerning the discovery, distribution, structural elucidation, biosynthesis and application prospects of sactipeptides.

scholarly journals High-Content Screening of Natural Products Reveals Novel Nuclear Export Inhibitors

2013 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bastien Cautain ◽  
Nuria de Pedro ◽  
Virginia Murillo Garzón ◽  
María Muñoz de Escalona ◽  
Victor González Menéndez ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Products ◽  
Nuclear Export ◽  
Chemical Space ◽  
Biological Activities ◽  
Tumor Formation ◽  
New Drugs ◽  
Inhibition Activity ◽  
Nucleocytoplasmic Trafficking ◽  
Active Metabolites ◽  
Chemical Structures

Natural products are considered an extremely valuable source for the discovery of new drugs against diverse pathologies. As yet, we have only explored a fraction of the diversity of bioactive compounds, and opportunities for discovering new natural products leading to new drugs are huge. In the present study, U2nesRELOC, a previously established cell-based imaging assay, was employed to screen a collection of extracts of microbial origin for nuclear export inhibition activity. The fluorescent signal of untreated U2nesRELOC cells localizes predominantly to the cytoplasm. Upon treatment with the nuclear export inhibitor leptomycin B, the fluorescent-tagged reporter proteins appear as speckles in the nucleus. A proprietary collection of extracts from fungi, actinomycetes, and unicellular bacteria that covers an uncommonly broad chemical space was used to interrogate this nuclear export assay system. A two-step image-based analysis allowed us to identify 12 extracts with biological activities that are not associated with previously known active metabolites. The fractionation and structural elucidation of active compounds revealed several chemical structures with nuclear export inhibition activity. Here we show that substrates of the nuclear export receptor CRM1, such as Rev, FOXO3a and NF-κB, accumulate in the nucleus in the presence of the fungal metabolite MDN-0105 with an IC50 value of 3.4 µM. Many important processes in tumor formation and progression, as well as in many viral infections, critically depend on the nucleocytoplasmic trafficking of proteins and RNA molecules. Therefore, the disruption of nuclear export is emerging as a novel therapeutic approach with enormous clinical potential. Our work highlights the potential of applying high-throughput phenotypic imaging on natural product extracts to identify novel nuclear export inhibitors.

scholarly journals DeepRiPP integrates multiomics data to automate discovery of novel ribosomally synthesized natural products

2019 ◽  
Vol 117 (1) ◽  
pp. 371-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nishanth J. Merwin ◽  
Walaa K. Mousa ◽  
Chris A. Dejong ◽  
Michael A. Skinnider ◽  
Michael J. Cannon ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Natural Products ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Biological Activities ◽  
Learning Technologies ◽  
Genomic Context ◽  
Chemical Structures ◽  
Metabolomic Data ◽  
Comparative Metabolomics ◽  
Modified Peptides

Microbial natural products represent a rich resource of evolved chemistry that forms the basis for the majority of pharmacotherapeutics. Ribosomally synthesized and posttranslationally modified peptides (RiPPs) are a particularly interesting class of natural products noted for their unique mode of biosynthesis and biological activities. Analyses of sequenced microbial genomes have revealed an enormous number of biosynthetic loci encoding RiPPs but whose products remain cryptic. In parallel, analyses of bacterial metabolomes typically assign chemical structures to only a minority of detected metabolites. Aligning these 2 disparate sources of data could provide a comprehensive strategy for natural product discovery. Here we present DeepRiPP, an integrated genomic and metabolomic platform that employs machine learning to automate the selective discovery and isolation of novel RiPPs. DeepRiPP includes 3 modules. The first, NLPPrecursor, identifies RiPPs independent of genomic context and neighboring biosynthetic genes. The second module, BARLEY, prioritizes loci that encode novel compounds, while the third, CLAMS, automates the isolation of their corresponding products from complex bacterial extracts. DeepRiPP pinpoints target metabolites using large-scale comparative metabolomics analysis across a database of 10,498 extracts generated from 463 strains. We apply the DeepRiPP platform to expand the landscape of novel RiPPs encoded within sequenced genomes and to discover 3 novel RiPPs, whose structures are exactly as predicted by our platform. By building on advances in machine learning technologies, DeepRiPP integrates genomic and metabolomic data to guide the isolation of novel RiPPs in an automated manner.

Semisynthetic triazoles as an approach in the discovery of Novel Lead Compounds

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pedro Alves Bezerra Morais ◽  
Carla Santana Francisco ◽  
Heberth de Paula ◽  
Rayssa Ribeiro ◽  
Mariana Alves Eloy ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Products ◽  
Medicinal Chemistry ◽  
Chemical Space ◽  
Biological Activities ◽  
Post Translational Modification ◽  
Cellular Processes ◽  
Modern Drug ◽  
New Chemical Entities ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The 19Th Century

: Historically, the medicinal chemistry is concerned with the approach of organic chemistry to new drug synthesis. Considering the fruitful collections of new molecular entities, the dedicated efforts for medicinal chemistry are rewarding. Planning and search of new and applicable pharmacologic therapies involve the altruistic nature of the scientists. Since the 19th century, notoriously the application of isolated and characterized plant-derived compounds in modern drug discovery and in various stages of clinical development highlight its viability and significance. Natural products influence a broad range of biological processes, covering transcription, translation, and post-translational modification and being effective modulators of almost all basic cellular processes. The research of new chemical entities through “click chemistry” continuously opens up a map for the remarkable exploration of chemical space in towards leading natural products optimization by structure-activity relationship. Finally, here in this review, we expect to gather a broad knowledge involving triazolic natural products derivatives, synthetic routes, structures, and their biological activities.

scholarly journals Analysis of a large food chemical database: chemical space, diversity, and complexity

F1000Research ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 993 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Jesús Naveja ◽  
Mariel P. Rico-Hidalgo ◽  
José L. Medina-Franco
Keyword(s):  
Natural Products ◽  
Chemical Space ◽  
Structural Complexity ◽  
Chemical Diversity ◽  
Chemical Structures ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Chemical Database ◽  
Protein Interactome ◽  
Limited Basis ◽  
Future Direction

Background: Food chemicals are a cornerstone in the food industry. However, its chemical diversity has been explored on a limited basis, for instance, previous analysis of food-related databases were done up to 2,200 molecules. The goal of this work was to quantify the chemical diversity of chemical compounds stored in FooDB, a database with nearly 24,000 food chemicals. Methods: The visual representation of the chemical space of FooDB was done with ChemMaps, a novel approach based on the concept of chemical satellites. The large food chemical database was profiled based on physicochemical properties, molecular complexity and scaffold content. The global diversity of FooDB was characterized using Consensus Diversity Plots. Results: It was found that compounds in FooDB are very diverse in terms of properties and structure, with a large structural complexity. It was also found that one third of the food chemicals are acyclic molecules and ring-containing molecules are mostly monocyclic, with several scaffolds common to natural products in other databases. Conclusions: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first analysis of the chemical diversity and complexity of FooDB. This study represents a step further to the emerging field of “Food Informatics”. Future study should compare directly the chemical structures of the molecules in FooDB with other compound databases, for instance, drug-like databases and natural products collections. An additional future direction of this work is to use the list of 3,228 polyphenolic compounds identified in this work to enhance the on-going polyphenol-protein interactome studies.

Hemoglobin F (HbF) inducers; History, Structure and Efficacies

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zahra Hashemi ◽  
Mohammad Ali Ebrahimzadeh
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Trials ◽  
Natural Products ◽  
Biological Activities ◽  
Globin Gene ◽  
Beta Thalassemia ◽  
Gene Promoters ◽  
Hemoglobin F ◽  
Chemical Structures

Abstract: Inherited beta-thalassemia is a major disease caused by irregular production of hemoglobin through reducing beta-globin chains. It has been observed that increasing fetal hemoglobin (HbF) production improves symptoms in the patients. Therefore, an increase in the level of HbF has been an operative approach for treating patients with beta-thalassemia. This review represents compounds with biological activities and pharmacological properties that can promote the HBF level and therefore used in the β-thalassemia patients' therapy. Various natural products with different mechanisms of action can be helpful in this medication cure. Clinical trials were efficient in improving the signs of patients. Association of in vivo, and in vitro studies of HbF induction and γ-globin mRNA growth displays that in vitro experiments could be an indicator of the in vivo response. The current study shows that; (a) HbF inducers can be grouped in several classes based on their chemical structures and mechanism of actions; b) According to several clinical trials, well-known drugs such as hydroxyurea and decitabine are useful HbF inducers; (c) The cellular biosensor K562 carrying genes under the control of the human γ-globin and β-globin gene promoters were applied during the researches; d) New natural products and lead compounds were found based on various studies as HbF inducers.

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