Engineered biosynthesis of glycosylated derivatives of narbomycin and evaluation of their antibacterial activities

A 14-membered macrolide antibiotic narbomycin produced from Streptomyces venezuelae ATCC 15439 is composed of polyketide macrolactone ring and D-desosamine as a deoxysugar moiety, which acts as an important determinant of its antibacterial activity. In order to generate diverse glycosylated derivatives of narbomycin, expression plasmids carrying different deoxysugar biosynthetic gene cassettes and the gene encoding a substrate-flexible glycosyltransferase DesVII were constructed and introduced into S. venezuelae YJ003 mutant strain bearing a deletion of thymidine-5'-diphospho-D-desosamine biosynthetic gene cluster. The resulting recombinants of S. venezuelae produced a range of new analogs of narbomycin, which possess unnatural sugar moieties instead of native deoxysugar D-desosamine. The structures of narbomycin derivatives were determined through nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and mass spectrometry analyses and their antibacterial activities were evaluated in vitro against erythromycin-susceptible and -resistant Enterococcus faecium and Staphylococcus aureus. Substitution with L-rhamnose or 3-O-demethyl-D-chalcose was demonstrated to exhibit greater antibacterial activity than narbomycin and the clinically relevant erythromycin. This work provides new insight into the functions of deoxysugar biosynthetic enzymes and structure-activity relationships of the sugar moieties attached to the macrolides and demonstrate the potential of combinatorial biosynthesis for the generation of new macrolides carrying diverse sugars with increased antibacterial activities.     

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

Lanthionine-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 from Actinobacteria. 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.     

A simple reverse genetics approach to elucidating the biosynthetic pathway of nocathiacin

Genomic library screening and genome mining are currently employed to identify biosynthetic gene clusters of thiopeptides. To elucidate the biosynthetic pathway of nocathiacin, we present a new approach with the application of simple reverse genetics. A relationship between structural features of thiopeptides and their biosynthetic pathways is established and is a starting point for speedily elucidating biosynthetic genes of various ribosomally-synthesized bioactive peptides with diverse modifications.     

Ribosomally-synthesised cyclic peptides from plants as drug leads and pharmaceutical scaffolds

Owing to their exceptional stability and favourable pharmacokinetic properties, plant-derived cyclic peptides have recently attracted significant attention in the field of peptide-based drug design. This article describes the three major classes of ribosomally-synthesised plant peptides – the cyclotides, the PawS-derived peptides and the orbitides – and reviews their applications as leads or scaffolds in drug design. These ribosomally-produced peptides have a range of biological activities, including anti-HIV, cytotoxic and immunomodulatory activity. In addition, recent interest has focused on their use as scaffolds to stabilise bioactive peptide sequences, thereby enhancing their biopharmaceutical properties. There are now more than 30 published papers on such ‘grafting’ applications, most of which have been reported only in the last few years, and several such studies have reported in vivo activity of orally delivered cyclic peptides. In this article, we describe approaches to the synthesis of cyclic peptides and their pharmaceutically-grafted derivatives as well as outlining their biosynthetic routes. Finally, we describe possible bioproduction routes for pharmaceutically active cyclic peptides, involving plants and plant suspension cultures.     

Initiation, elongation, and termination strategies in polyketide and polypeptide antibiotic biosynthesis.

Progress in sequence analysis of biosynthetic gene clusters encoding polyketides and nonribosomal peptides and in the reconstitution of in vitro activities continues to reveal new insights into the growth of these natural products' acyl chains, which have been revealed as a series of elongating, covalent, acyl enzyme intermediates on their multimodular scaffolds. Studies that focus on the three stages of natural product biosynthesis - initiation, elongation, and termination - have yielded crucial information on monomer substrate specificity, domain and module portability, and product release mechanisms, all of which are important not only for an understanding of this exquisite enzymatic machinery, but also for the rational construction of new, functional synthetases and synthases that are a goal of combinatorial biosynthesis.     

Biosynthesis and combinatorial biosynthesis of antifungal nucleoside antibiotics

There is an urgent need for new antifungal agents to treat or combat fungal infection in humans and plants.Antifungal nucleoside antibiotics are an important family of natural products with distinctive structural features.Understanding their biosynthetic machinery is of great importance for the improvement of antibiotics titers.More importantly,it is a requisite for combinatorial biosynthesis to create hybrid nucleoside antibiotics.We herein focus on findings on the natural and designed biosynthesis of this important family of nucleoside antibiotics.     

羊毛硫肽的高通量工程改造方法新进展

羊毛硫肽(lanthipeptide)是由核糖体合成并经翻译后修饰产生的肽类天然产物,具有丰富的分子结构和多样的生物活性.新型羊毛硫肽是活性药物的重要来源,可以通过基因组挖掘和工程改造获得.羊毛硫肽前体肽由基因编码,同时其合成酶具有较高的底物杂泛性.基于这些特征,可以对羊毛硫肽的生物合成过程开展高通量工程改造,从而快速...     

Nature’s combinatorial biosynthesis and recently engineered production of nucleoside antibiotics in <Emphasis Type="Italic">Streptomyces</Emphasis>

Modified nucleosides produced by Streptomyces and related actinomycetes are widely used in agriculture and medicine as antibacterial, antifungal, anticancer and antiviral agents. These specialized small-molecule metabolites are biosynthesized by complex enzymatic machineries encoded within gene clusters in the genome. The past decade has witnessed a burst of reports defining the key metabolic processes involved in the biosynthesis of several distinct families of nucleoside antibiotics. Furthermore, genome sequencing of various Streptomyces species has dramatically increased over recent years. Potential biosynthetic gene clusters for novel nucleoside antibiotics are now apparent by analysis of these genomes. Here we revisit strategies for production improvement of nucleoside antibiotics that have defined mechanisms of action, and are in clinical or agricultural use. We summarize the progress for genetically manipulating biosynthetic pathways for structural diversification of nucleoside antibiotics. Microorganism-based biosynthetic examples are provided and organized under genetic principles and metabolic engineering guidelines. We show perspectives on the future of combinatorial biosynthesis, and present a working model for discovery of novel nucleoside natural products in Streptomyces.     

A gene cluster for biosynthesis of kanamycin from Streptomyces kanamyceticus: comparison with gentamicin biosynthetic gene cluster

Gene clusters for the biosynthesis of kanamycin (Km) and gentamicin (Gm) were isolated from the genomic libraries of Streptomyces kanamyceticus and Micromonospora echinospora, respectively. The sequencing of the 47 kb-region of S. kanamyceticus genomic DNA revealed 40 putative open reading frames (ORFs) encoding Km biosynthetic proteins, regulatory proteins, and resistance and transport proteins. Similarly, the sequencing of 32.6 kb genomic DNA of M. echinospora revealed a Gm biosynthetic gene cluster flanked by resistant genes. Biosynthetic pathways for the formation of Km were proposed by the comparative study of biosynthetic genes. Out of 12 putative Km biosynthetic genes, kanA was expressed in Escherichia coli and determined its function as a 2-deoxy-scyllo-inosose synthase. Furthermore, the acetylations of aminoglycoside-aminocyclitols (AmAcs) by Km acetyltransferase (KanM) were also demonstrated. The acetylated derivatives completely lost their antibacterial activities against Bacillus subtilis. The comparative genetic studies of Gm, Km, tobramycin (Tm), and butirosin (Bn) reveal their similar biosynthetic routes and provide a framework for the further biosynthetic studies.     

肽类抗生素生物合成基因簇在Escherichia coli中的异源表达

微生物能够产生众多结构和生物活性多样的次生代谢产物,而其生物合成基因簇的挖掘和异源表达是药物创新和产量提高的必要前提. 在过去20年里,大量重要天然产物的生物合成基因簇在微生物中被不断的发现. 在这些被挖掘的基因簇中,肽类抗生素的生物合成基因簇占了很大比重.肽类抗生素因具有抗菌、抗肿瘤、抗病毒等多种生物学活性而备受化学家和药物学家的重视. 如能了解它们的生物合成机制,实现其基因簇的异源表达,将使合理化遗传修饰生物合成通路获取结构类似物（药物开发）和提高产量成为可能. 大肠杆菌作为最广泛、最成功的表达体系,常用来表达外源基因,但一般只能表达一个或几个基因,却很少有用它来表达整个生物合成基因簇. 2001年,Khosla和Cane在E.coli中成功异源表达了一个复杂聚酮天然产物（红霉素苷原6dEB）基因簇. 这是首个有关在E.coli中异源表达天然产物生物合成基因簇的研究. 至此之后,大肠杆菌开始作为生物合成基因簇的异源表达宿主,越来越受到相关领域的重视. 紧接着核糖体肽和非核糖体肽生物合成基因簇也相继在大肠杆菌中成功异源表达. 本文对肽类抗生素生物合成基因簇在E.coli中的异源表达进行了综述.     

Engineered biosynthesis of the peptide antibiotic bacitracin in the surrogate host Bacillus subtilis.

Nonribosomal peptides are processed on multifunctional enzymes called nonribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPSs), whose modular multidomain arrangement allowed the rational design of new peptide products. However, the lack of natural competence and efficient transformation methods for most of nonribosomal peptide producer strains prevented the in vivo manipulation of these biosynthetic gene clusters. In this study, we present methods for the construction of a genetically engineered Bacillus subtilis surrogate host for the integration and heterologous expression of foreign NRPS genes. In the B. subtilis surrogate host, we deleted the resident 26-kilobase srfA gene cluster encoding the surfactin synthetases and subsequently used the same chromosomal location for integration of the entire 49-kilobase bacitracin biosynthetic gene cluster from Bacillus licheniformis by a stepwise homologous recombination method. Synthesis of the branched cyclic peptide antibiotic bacitracin in the engineered B. subtilis strain was achieved at high level, indicating a functional production and proper posttranslational modification of the bacitracin synthetases BacABC, as well as the expression of the associated bacitracin self-resistance genes. This engineered and genetically amenable B. subtilis strain will facilitate the rational design of new bacitracin derivatives.     

Biosynthesis of Albomycin δ(2) Provides a Template for Assembling Siderophore and Aminoacyl-tRNA Synthetase Inhibitor Conjugates

"Trojan horse" antibiotic albomycins are peptidyl nucleosides consisting of a highly modified 4'-thiofuranosyl cytosine moiety and a ferrichrome siderophore that are linked by a peptide bond via a serine residue. While the latter component serves to sequester iron from the environment, the seryl nucleoside portion is a potent inhibitor of bacterial seryl-tRNA synthetases, resulting in broad-spectrum antimicrobial activities of albomycin δ(2). The isolation of albomycins has revealed this biological activity is optimized only following two unusual cytosine modifications, N4-carbamoylation and N3-methylation. We identified a genetic locus (named abm) for albomycin production in Streptomyces sp. ATCC 700974. Gene deletion and complementation experiments along with bioinformatic analysis suggested 18 genes are responsible for albomycin biosynthesis and resistance, allowing us to propose a potential biosynthetic pathway for installing the novel chemical features. The gene abmI, encoding a putative methyltransferase, was functionally assigned in vitro and shown to modify the N3 of a variety of cytosine-containing nucleosides and antibiotics such as blasticidin S. Furthermore, a ΔabmI mutant was shown to produce the descarbamoyl-desmethyl albomycin analogue, supporting that the N3-methylation occurs before the N4-carbamoylation in the biosynthesis of albomycin δ(2). The combined genetic information was utilized to identify an abm-related locus (named ctj) from the draft genome of Streptomyces sp. C. Cross-complementation experiments and in vitro studies with CtjF, the AbmI homologue, suggest the production of a similar 4'-thiofuranosyl cytosine in this organism. In total, the genetic and biochemical data provide a biosynthetic template for assembling siderophore-inhibitor conjugates and modifying the albomycin scaffold to generate new derivatives.     

Cyanobactins—ribosomal cyclic peptides produced by cyanobacteria

Cyanobactins are small cyclic peptides that are produced by a diverse selection of cyanobacteria living in symbioses as well as terrestrial, marine, or freshwater environments. They include compounds with antimalarial, antitumor, and multidrug reversing activities and potential as pharmaceutical leads. Cyanobactins are produced through the proteolytic cleavage and cyclization of precursor peptides coupled with further posttranslational modifications such as heterocyclization, oxidation, or prenylation of amino acids. Cyanobactin gene clusters encode two proteases which cleave and cyclisize the precursor peptide as well as proteins participating in posttranslational modifications. The bioinformatic mining of cyanobacterial genomes has led to the discovery of novel cyanobactins. Heterologous expression of these gene clusters provided insights into the role of the genes participating in the biosynthesis of cyanobactins and facilitated the rational design of novel peptides. Enzymes participating in the biosynthesis of cyanobactins may prove useful as catalysts for producing novel cyclic peptides in the future. The recent discovery of the cyanobactin biosynthetic pathway in cyanobacteria extends our knowledge of their potential as producers of interesting metabolites.     

Biosynthesis of new lipopentapeptides by an engineered strain of Streptomyces sp.

Arylomycins are type I signal peptidase inhibitors and have a potential as a new type of antibiotics. They were identified from the broth of Streptomyces sp. HCCB10043. The arylomycin biosynthetic gene cluster in this strain was identical to that in S. roseosporus. Within the gene cluster, aryC, encoding a P450 enzyme, was deduced to be responsible for biaryl bond formation in, the arylomycins. Inactivation of aryC abolished arylomycin production and led to the generation of two novel linear lipopentapeptides lacking the aryl–aryl linkage. These derivatives had lost their antibacterial activities against Staphylococcus epidermidis which is sensitive to arylomycins A2 and A4.     

Proteome analysis of Myxococcus xanthus by off-line two-dimensional chromatographic separation using monolithic poly-(styrene-divinylbenzene) columns combined with ion-trap tandem mass spectrometry

Myxobacteria are potent producers of secondary metabolites exhibiting diverse biological activities and pharmacological potential. The proteome of Myxococcus xanthus DK1622 was characterized by two-dimensional chromatographic separation of tryptic peptides from a lysate followed by tandem mass spectrometric identification. The high degree of orthogonality of the separation system employing polymer-based strong cation-exchange and monolithic reversed-phase stationary phases was clearly demonstrated. Upon automated database searching, 1312 unique peptides were identified, which were associated with 631 unique proteins. High-molecular polyketide synthetases and nonribosomal peptide synthetases, known to be involved in the biosynthesis of various secondary metabolites, were readily detected. Besides the identification of gene products associated with the production of known secondary metabolites, proteins could also be identified for six gene clusters, for which no biosynthetic product has been known so far.     

Biosynthetic engineering of nonribosomal peptide synthetases

From the evolutionary melting pot of natural product synthetase genes, microorganisms elicit antibiotics, communication tools, and iron scavengers. Chemical biologists manipulate these genes to recreate similarly diverse and potent biological activities not on evolutionary time scales but within months. Enzyme engineering has progressed considerably in recent years and offers new screening, modelling, and design tools for natural product designers. Here, recent advances in enzyme engineering and their application to nonribosomal peptide synthetases are reviewed. Among the nonribosomal peptides that have been subjected to biosynthetic engineering are the antibiotics daptomycin, calcium‐dependent antibiotic, and gramicidin S. With these peptides, incorporation of unnatural building blocks and modulation of bioactivities via various structural modifications have been successfully demonstrated. Natural product engineering on the biosynthetic level is not a reliable method yet. However, progress in the understanding and manipulation of biosynthetic pathways may enable the routine production of optimized peptide drugs in the near future. Copyright © 2016 European Peptide Society and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Biochemical characterization of the CDP-D-arabinitol biosynthetic pathway in Streptococcus pneumoniae 17F

Streptococcus pneumoniae is a major human pathogen associated with many diseases worldwide. Capsular polysaccharides (CPSs) are the major virulence factor. The biosynthetic pathway of D-arabinitol, which is present in the CPSs of several S. pneumoniae serotypes, has never been identified. In this study, the genes abpA (previously known as abp1) and abpB (previously known as abp2), which have previously been reported to be responsible for nucleoside diphosphate (NDP)-D-arabinitol (the nucleotide-activated form of D-arabinitol) synthesis, were cloned. The enzyme products were overexpressed, purified, and analyzed for their respective activities. Novel products produced by AbpA- and AbpB-catalyzing reactions were detected by capillary electrophoresis, and the structures of the products were elucidated using electrospray ionization mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. As a result, abpA was identified to be a D-xylulose-5-phosphate cytidylyltransferase-encoding gene, responsible for the transfer of CTP to D-xylulose-5-phosphate (D-Xlu-5-P) to form CDP-D-xylulose, and abpB was characterized to be a CDP-D-xylulose reductase-encoding gene, responsible for the conversion of CDP-D-xylulose to CDP-D-arabinitol as the final product. The kinetic parameters of AbpA for the substrates D-Xlu-5-P and CTP and those of AbpB for the substrate CDP-D-xylulose and the cofactors NADH or NADPH were measured, and the effects of temperature, pH, and cations on the two enzymes were analyzed. This study confirmed the involvement of the genes abpA and abpB and their products in the biosynthetic pathway of CDP-D-arabinitol.     

ThioFinder: A Web-Based Tool for the Identification of Thiopeptide Gene Clusters in DNA Sequences

Thiopeptides are a growing class of sulfur-rich, highly modified heterocyclic peptides that are mainly active against Gram-positive bacteria including various drug-resistant pathogens. Recent studies also reveal that many thiopeptides inhibit the proliferation of human cancer cells, further expanding their application potentials for clinical use. Thiopeptide biosynthesis shares a common paradigm, featuring a ribosomally synthesized precursor peptide and conserved posttranslational modifications, to afford a characteristic core system, but differs in tailoring to furnish individual members. Identification of new thiopeptide gene clusters, by taking advantage of increasing information of DNA sequences from bacteria, may facilitate new thiopeptide discovery and enrichment of the unique biosynthetic elements to produce novel drug leads by applying the principle of combinatorial biosynthesis. In this study, we have developed a web-based tool ThioFinder to rapidly identify thiopeptide biosynthetic gene cluster from DNA sequence using a profile Hidden Markov Model approach. Fifty-four new putative thiopeptide biosynthetic gene clusters were found in the sequenced bacterial genomes of previously unknown producing microorganisms. ThioFinder is fully supported by an open-access database ThioBase, which contains the sufficient information of the 99 known thiopeptides regarding the chemical structure, biological activity, producing organism, and biosynthetic gene (cluster) along with the associated genome if available. The ThioFinder website offers researchers a unique resource and great flexibility for sequence analysis of thiopeptide biosynthetic gene clusters. ThioFinder is freely available at http://db-mml.sjtu.edu.cn/ThioFinder/.     

Discovery and molecular engineering of sugar-containing natural product biosynthetic pathways in actinomycetes

Significant progress has recently been made concerning the engineering of deoxysugar biosynthesis. The biosynthetic gene clusters of several deoxysugars from various polyketides and aminoglycosides-producing microorganisms have been cloned and studied. This review introduces the biosynthetic pathways of several deoxysugars and the generation of novel hybrid macrolide antibiotics via the coexpression of deoxysugar biosynthetic gene cassettes and the substrateflexible glycosyltransferases in a host organism as well as the production of TDP-deoxysugar derivatives via one-pot enzymatic reactions with the identified enzymes. These recent developments in the engineering of deoxysugars biosynthesis may pave the way to create novel secondary metabolites with potential biological activities.     

SanJ, an ATP-dependent picolinate-CoA ligase, catalyzes the conversion of picolinate to picolinate-CoA during nikkomycin biosynthesis in Streptomyces ansochromogenes

Nikkomycins, a group of peptidyl nucleoside antibiotics, are competitive inhibitors of chitin synthase. The nikkomycin biosynthetic gene cluster has been cloned previously from Streptomyces ansochromogenes. The cluster contains 25 complete ORFs including sanJ. The sanJ gene was inactivated by the insertion of a kanamycin resistance gene and the resulting disruption mutants failed to produce nikkomycins. Moreover, the nikkomycin production was restored by complementation with a single copy of sanJ. The deduced product of sanJ bears striking sequence similarity with enzymes belonging to the adenylate-forming superfamily. sanJ was overexpressed as a His6-tagged fusion protein in Escherichia coli and purified to apparent homogeneity by affinity chromatography. The purified SanJ demonstrated adenylate ligase activity in the presence of picolinate or its analogs (benzoate, nicotinate, 4-methoxybenzoate, 4-hydroxybenzoate), ATP and Mg2+. SanJ was also found to catalyze the conversion of picolinate, benzoate, nicotinate to their corresponding CoA esters and 4-methoxybenzoate, 4-hydroxybenzoate to their respective AMP derivatives in vitro. This was unambiguously shown by using HPLC and electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) or by comparing the reaction product with an authentic standard of benzoyl-CoA. These results indicated that sanJ encodes an ATP-dependent picolinate-CoA ligase which is essential for nikkomycin biosynthesis.