Relationship between the fatty acid composition and the type of antibiotics produced by Streptomyces lasaliensis

Production of pikromycin using branched chain amino acid catabolism in Streptomyces venezuelae ATCC 15439

Branched chain amino acids (BCAA) are catabolized into various acyl-CoA compounds, which are key precursors used in polyketide productions. Because of that, BCAA catabolism needs fine tuning of flux balances for enhancing the production of polyketide antibiotics. To enhance BCAA catabolism for pikromycin production in Streptomyces venezuelae ATCC 15439, three key enzymes of BCAA catabolism, 3-ketoacyl acyl carrier protein synthase III, acyl-CoA dehydrogenase, and branched chain α-keto acid dehydrogenase (BCDH) were manipulated. BCDH overexpression in the wild type strain resulted in 1.3 fold increase in pikromycin production compared to that of WT, resulting in total 25 mg/L of pikromycin. To further increase pikromycin production, methylmalonyl-CoA mutase linked to succinyl-CoA production was overexpressed along with BCDH. Overexpression of the two enzymes resulted in the highest titer of total macrolide production of 43 mg/L, which was about 2.2 fold increase compared to that of the WT. However, it accumulated and produced dehydroxylated forms of pikromycin and methymycin, including their derivatives as well. It indicated that activities of pikC, P450 monooxygenase, newly became a bottleneck in pikromycin synthesis.

Compounds isolated at the Department of Biogenesis of Natural Substances, Institute of Microbiology, Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, in 1984-1988

A total of 41 compounds studied at the Department of Biogenesis of Natural Substances between 1984 and 1988 are characterized and tabulated. They include natural, semisynthetic and synthetic compounds.