Serratia plymuthica strain RVH1, initially isolated from an industrial food processing environment, displays potent antimicrobial activity towards a broad spectrum of Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacterial pathogens. Isolation and subsequent structure determination of bioactive molecules led to the identification of two polyamino antibiotics with the same molecular structure as zeamine and z...

BACKGROUND Recent studies show that some Escherichia coli strains possessing a gene cluster named the pks island might have a causative role in the development of human colorectal cancer (CRC). In several reports from Europe, they are found more prevalently in colon tissue specimens derived from CRC patients compared to those from controls. In this study we sought to clarify the difference in p...

Wolfiporia cocos is an edible and medicinal fungus that grows in association with pine trees, and its dried sclerotium, known as Fuling in China, has been used as a traditional medicine in East Asian countries for centuries. Nearly 10% of the traditional Chinese medicinal preparations contain W. cocos. Currently, the commercial production of Fuling is limited because of the lack of pine-based s...

Lactimidomycin (LTM, 1) and iso-migrastatin (iso-MGS, 2) belong to the glutarimide-containing polyketide family of natural products. We previously cloned and characterized the mgs biosynthetic gene cluster from Streptomyces platensis NRRL 18993. The iso-MGS biosynthetic machinery featured an acyltransferase (AT)-less type I polyketide synthase (PKS) and three tailoring enzymes (MgsIJK). We now ...

Background Many Escherichia coli strains are considered to be a component of the normal flora found in the human and animal intestinal tracts. While most E. coli strains are commensal, some strains encode virulence factors that enable the bacteria to cause intestinal and extra-intestinal clinically-relevant infections. Colibactin, encoded by a genomic island (pks island), and cytotoxic necrotiz...

Pallister-Killian syndrome (PKS) is a multisystem sporadic genetic condition characterized by facial anomalies, variable developmental delay and intellectual impairment, hypotonia, hearing loss, seizures, pigmentary skin differences, temporal alopecia, diaphragmatic hernia, congenital heart defects, and other systemic abnormalities. PKS is typically caused by the presence of a supernumerary iso...

Aspergillus species are industrially and agriculturally important as fermentors and as producers of various secondary metabolites. Among them, fungal polyketides such as lovastatin and melanin are considered a gold mine for bioactive compounds. We used a phylogenomic approach to investigate the distribution of iterative polyketide synthases (PKS) in eight sequenced Aspergilli and classified ove...

The first two steps of aflatoxin biosynthesis are catalyzed by the HexA/B and by the Pks protein. The phylogenetic analysis clearly distinguished fungal HexA/B from FAS subunits and from other homologous proteins. The phylogenetic trees of the HexA and HexB set of proteins share the same clustering. Proteins involved in the synthesis of fatty acids or in the aflatoxin or sterigmatocystin biosyn...