Maytansinoids are potent antitumor agents found in plants and microorganisms. To elucidate their biosynthesis at the biochemical and genetic level and to set the stage for their structure modification through genetic engineering, we have cloned two gene clusters required for the biosynthesis of the maytansinoid, ansamitocin, from a cosmid library of Actinosynnema pretiosum ssp. auranticum ATCC ...

Fusarium graminearum is a causal organism of head blight in cereals and maize. Although few secondary metabolites produced by F. are considered disease virulence factors, many molecular products biosynthetic gene clusters expressed during infection their associated role the unknown. In particular, predicted meroterpenoid cluster historically designated as “C16” likely with pathogenicity. Presen...

Correction for ‘Engineering strategies rational polyketide synthase design’ by Maja Klaus et al., Nat. Prod. Rep., 2018, 35, 1070–1081, DOI: 10.1039/C8NP00030A.

The mechanism of a type I1 polyketide synthase was analyzed by combinatorially expressing components of the tetracenomycin (tcm) and the actinorhodin (act) polyketide synthase genes in various mutants or heterologous hosts. Structural analysis of metabolites produced by the recombinant organisms provided evidence to dissect the function of individual components of a type II PKS. Complementation...

Contamination of corn, cotton, peanuts and tree nuts by aflatoxins is a severe economic burden for growers. A current biocontrol strategy is to use non-aflatoxigenic Aspergillus flavus strains to competitively exclude field toxigenic Aspergillus species. A. flavus K49 does not produce aflatoxins and cyclopiazonic acid (CPA) and is currently being tested in corn-growing fields in Mississippi. We...

BACKGROUND Polyketides are natural products with a wide range of biological functions and pharmaceutical applications. Discovery and utilization of polyketides can be facilitated by understanding the evolutionary processes that gave rise to the biosynthetic machinery and the natural product potential of extant organisms. Gene duplication and subfunctionalization, as well as horizontal gene tran...

Amphotericin B is a powerful but toxic drug used against fungal infections and leishmaniases. These diseases would be treated more effectively if non-toxic amphotericin derivatives could be produced on a large scale at low cost. Genetic manipulation of the amphotericin B producer, Streptomyces nodosus, has previously led to the detection and partial characterisation of 8-deoxyamphotericin B, 16...

This paper reports the first draft genome sequence for a strain of Nocardia cerradoensis obtained from an immunocompetent patient with a knee infection. The 8.2-Mb genome has 8,329 coding sequences, including intrinsic resistance genes, biosynthetic gene clusters for polyketide synthase and nonribosomal peptide synthase, virulence genes, and prophages.

Recently, the Aspergillus terreus terrein gene cluster was identified and selected for development of a new heterologous expression system. The cluster encodes the specific transcription factor TerR that is indispensable for terrein cluster induction. To identify TerR binding sites, different recombinant versions of the TerR DNA-binding domain were analyzed for specific motif recognition. The h...

UNLABELLED PKSIIIexplorer, a web server based on 'transductive Support Vector Machine' allows fast and reliable prediction of Type III polyketide synthase proteins. It provides a simple unique platform to identify the probability of a particular sequence, being a type III polyketide synthases or not with moderately high accuracy. We hope that our method could serve as a useful program for the t...