Diversity-oriented combinatorial biosynthesis of benzenediol lactone scaffolds by subunit shuffling of fungal polyketide synthases

Yuquan Xu, Tong Zhou, Shuwei Zhang, Patricia Espinosa-Artiles, Luoyi Wang, Wei Zhang, Min Lin, A. A.Leslie Gunatilaka, Jixun Zhan*, István Molnár (Corresponding Author)

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

60 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Combinatorial biosynthesis aspires to exploit the promiscuity of microbial anabolic pathways to engineer the synthesis of new chemical entities. Fungal benzenediol lactone (BDL) polyketides are important pharmacophores with wide-ranging bioactivities, including heat shock response and immune system modulatory effects. Their biosynthesis on a pair of sequentially acting iterative polyketide synthases (iPKSs) offers a test case for the modularization of secondary metabolic pathways into "build-couple-pair" combinatorial synthetic schemes. Expression of random pairs of iPKS subunits from four BDL model systems in a yeast heterologous host created a diverse library of BDL congeners, including a polyketide with an unnatural skeleton and heat shock response-inducing activity. Pairwise heterocombinations of the iPKS subunits also helped to illuminate the innate, idiosyncratic programming of these enzymes. Even in combinatorial contexts, these biosynthetic programs remained largely unchanged, so that the iPKSs built their cognate biosynthons, coupled these building blocks into chimeric polyketide intermediates, and catalyzed intramolecular pairing to release macrocycles or α-pyrones. However, some heterocombinations also provoked stuttering, i.e., the relaxation of iPKSs chain length control to assemble larger homologous products. The success of such a plug and play approach to biosynthesize novel chemical diversity bodes well for bioprospecting unnatural polyketides for drug discovery.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)12354-12359
Number of pages6
JournalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Volume111
Issue number34
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 26 Aug 2014
MoE publication typeA1 Journal article-refereed

Keywords

  • Fungal genetics
  • Secondary metabolites

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