scholarly journals Recent Advances in Discovery of Lead Structures from Microbial Natural Products: Genomics- and Metabolomics-Guided Acceleration

Molecules ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (9) ◽  
pp. 2542
Author(s):  
Linda Sukmarini

Natural products (NPs) are evolutionarily optimized as drug-like molecules and remain the most consistently successful source of drugs and drug leads. They offer major opportunities for finding novel lead structures that are active against a broad spectrum of assay targets, particularly those from secondary metabolites of microbial origin. Due to traditional discovery approaches’ limitations relying on untargeted screening methods, there is a growing trend to employ unconventional secondary metabolomics techniques. Aided by the more in-depth understanding of different biosynthetic pathways and the technological advancement in analytical instrumentation, the development of new methodologies provides an alternative that can accelerate discoveries of new lead-structures of natural origin. This present mini-review briefly discusses selected examples regarding advancements in bioinformatics and genomics (focusing on genome mining and metagenomics approaches), as well as bioanalytics (mass-spectrometry) towards the microbial NPs-based drug discovery and development. The selected recent discoveries from 2015 to 2020 are featured herein.

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
pp. 680
Author(s):  
Irina Voitsekhovskaia ◽  
Constanze Paulus ◽  
Charlotte Dahlem ◽  
Yuriy Rebets ◽  
Suvd Nadmid ◽  
...  

Natural products produced by bacteria found in unusual and poorly studied ecosystems, such as Lake Baikal, represent a promising source of new valuable drug leads. Here we report the isolation of a new Streptomyces sp. strain IB201691-2A from the Lake Baikal endemic mollusk Benedictia baicalensis. In the course of an activity guided screening three new angucyclines, named baikalomycins A–C, were isolated and characterized, highlighting the potential of poorly investigated ecological niches. Besides that, the strain was found to accumulate large quantities of rabelomycin and 5-hydroxy-rabelomycin, known shunt products in angucyclines biosynthesis. Baikalomycins A–C demonstrated varying degrees of anticancer activity. Rabelomycin and 5-hydroxy-rabelomycin further demonstrated antiproliferative activities. The structure elucidation showed that baikalomycin A is a modified aquayamycin with β-d-amicetose and two additional hydroxyl groups at unusual positions (6a and 12a) of aglycone. Baikalomycins B and C have alternating second sugars attached, α-l-amicetose and α-l-aculose, respectively. The gene cluster for baikalomycins biosynthesis was identified by genome mining, cloned using a transformation-associated recombination technique and successfully expressed in S. albus J1074. It contains a typical set of genes responsible for an angucycline core assembly, all necessary genes for the deoxy sugars biosynthesis, and three genes coding for the glycosyltransferase enzymes. Heterologous expression and deletion experiments allowed to assign the function of glycosyltransferases involved in the decoration of baikalomycins aglycone.


Marine Drugs ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 20
Author(s):  
Tiago Leão ◽  
Mingxun Wang ◽  
Nathan Moss ◽  
Ricardo da Silva ◽  
Jon Sanders ◽  
...  

Microbial natural products are important for the understanding of microbial interactions, chemical defense and communication, and have also served as an inspirational source for numerous pharmaceutical drugs. Tropical marine cyanobacteria have been highlighted as a great source of new natural products, however, few reports have appeared wherein a multi-omics approach has been used to study their natural products potential (i.e., reports are often focused on an individual natural product and its biosynthesis). This study focuses on describing the natural product genetic potential as well as the expressed natural product molecules in benthic tropical cyanobacteria. We collected from several sites around the world and sequenced the genomes of 24 tropical filamentous marine cyanobacteria. The informatics program antiSMASH was used to annotate the major classes of gene clusters. BiG-SCAPE phylum-wide analysis revealed the most promising strains for natural product discovery among these cyanobacteria. LCMS/MS-based metabolomics highlighted the most abundant molecules and molecular classes among 10 of these marine cyanobacterial samples. We observed that despite many genes encoding for peptidic natural products, peptides were not as abundant as lipids and lipopeptides in the chemical extracts. Our results highlight a number of highly interesting biosynthetic gene clusters for genome mining among these cyanobacterial samples.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Benjamin Baker

<p>The utilisation of natural products for treatment of human ailments has been rooted in various cultures for centuries. Extraction of natural products has been essential for the discovery of new drugs and inspiration for synthetic analogues. Since the success of penicillin, microbial natural products have been of interest. Genome mining of Thermogemmatisporastrain T81, a thermophile from the Taupo Volcanic Zone, found the potential for the production of novel ribosomally synthesised and post-translationally modified peptides (RiPPs). Previous work showed that T81 exhibited antimicrobial activity against a wide variety of extremophillic bacteria. Although the three thiopeptides encoded forin the genome of T81 have not been found, the lanthipeptide tikitericin has recently been isolated and described. Unfortunately tikitericin is produced in low quantities by T81 andbioactivity data has not yet been obtained. Because of its potential antimicrobial activity, different routes to produce it are of interest. The aim of this project wasto synthesisetikitericin by solid phase peptide synthesis. MS imaging was also utilised to search for the presence of tikitericin as an antimicrobial agent in situ.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (12) ◽  
pp. 1085
Author(s):  
Jin Feng ◽  
Maurice Hauser ◽  
Russell J. Cox ◽  
Elizabeth Skellam

Microbial natural products have had phenomenal success in drug discovery and development yet form distinct classes based on the origin of their native producer. Methods that enable metabolic engineers to combine the most useful features of the different classes of natural products may lead to molecules with enhanced biological activities. In this study, we modified the metabolism of the fungus Aspergillus oryzae to enable the synthesis of triketide lactone (TKL), the product of the modular polyketide synthase DEBS1-TE engineered from bacteria. We established (2S)-methylmalonyl-CoA biosynthesis via introducing a propionyl-CoA carboxylase complex (PCC); reassembled the 11.2 kb DEBS1-TE coding region from synthetic codon-optimized gene fragments using yeast recombination; introduced bacterial phosphopantetheinyltransferase SePptII; investigated propionyl-CoA synthesis and degradation pathways; and developed improved delivery of exogenous propionate. Depending on the conditions used titers of TKL ranged from <0.01–7.4 mg/L. In conclusion, we have demonstrated that A. oryzae can be used as an alternative host for the synthesis of polyketides from bacteria, even those that require toxic or non-native substrates. Our metabolically engineered A. oryzae may offer advantages over current heterologous platforms for producing valuable and complex natural products.


Author(s):  
Elizabeth Jayex Panakkal ◽  
Nichaphat Kitiborwornkul ◽  
Malinee Sriariyanun ◽  
Jakaphan Ratanapoompinyo ◽  
Patchanee Yasurin ◽  
...  

Rising trends in the consumptions of food flavour compounds lead to motivation in the production of food flavours. The conventional techniques of flavour production are insufficient to produce flavour compounds according to the ascending demands of the market in terms of quantities and varieties. The current flavour production methods utilize chemical synthesis, which can produce a greater numbers of flavours with less time. However, the demand for natural products in consumables have created a necessity for new methodologies to produce flavour compounds with the label of “natural” origin. Emerging techniques in biotechnologies have enabled industries to produce compounds that can be considered natural. This review provides insights into the classification of flavour compounds and their production using microorganisms and enzymes in an ecofriendlier manner. The compounds produced by these techniques can be labelled as “natural” and can increase the market size of food flavours.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Benjamin Baker

<p>The utilisation of natural products for treatment of human ailments has been rooted in various cultures for centuries. Extraction of natural products has been essential for the discovery of new drugs and inspiration for synthetic analogues. Since the success of penicillin, microbial natural products have been of interest. Genome mining of Thermogemmatisporastrain T81, a thermophile from the Taupo Volcanic Zone, found the potential for the production of novel ribosomally synthesised and post-translationally modified peptides (RiPPs). Previous work showed that T81 exhibited antimicrobial activity against a wide variety of extremophillic bacteria. Although the three thiopeptides encoded forin the genome of T81 have not been found, the lanthipeptide tikitericin has recently been isolated and described. Unfortunately tikitericin is produced in low quantities by T81 andbioactivity data has not yet been obtained. Because of its potential antimicrobial activity, different routes to produce it are of interest. The aim of this project wasto synthesisetikitericin by solid phase peptide synthesis. MS imaging was also utilised to search for the presence of tikitericin as an antimicrobial agent in situ.</p>


Author(s):  
Li Cao ◽  
Truc Do ◽  
A James Link

Abstract Natural products remain a critical source of medicines and drug leads. One of the most rapidly growing superclasses of natural products is RiPPs: ribosomally synthesized and posttranslationally modified peptides. RiPPs have rich and diverse bioactivities. This review highlights examples of the molecular mechanisms of action that underly those bioactivities. Particular emphasis is placed on RiPP/target interactions for which there is structural information. This detailed mechanism of action work is critical toward the development of RiPPs as therapeutics and can also be used to prioritize hits in RiPP genome mining studies.


Author(s):  
Patrick Videau ◽  
Kaitlyn Wells ◽  
Arun Singh ◽  
Jessie Eiting ◽  
Philip Proteau ◽  
...  

Cyanobacteria are prolific producers of natural products and genome mining has shown that many orphan biosynthetic gene clusters can be found in sequenced cyanobacterial genomes. New tools and methodologies are required to investigate these biosynthetic gene clusters and here we present the use of <i>Anabaena </i>sp. strain PCC 7120 as a host for combinatorial biosynthesis of natural products using the indolactam natural products (lyngbyatoxin A, pendolmycin, and teleocidin B-4) as a test case. We were able to successfully produce all three compounds using codon optimized genes from Actinobacteria. We also introduce a new plasmid backbone based on the native <i>Anabaena</i>7120 plasmid pCC7120ζ and show that production of teleocidin B-4 can be accomplished using a two-plasmid system, which can be introduced by co-conjugation.


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