Mining for a new class of fungal natural products: the evolution, diversity, and distribution of isocyanide synthase biosynthetic gene clusters.

ABSTRACT: The products of non-canonical isocyanide synthase (ICS) biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) mediate pathogenesis, microbial competition, and metal-homeostasis through metal-associated chemistry. We sought to enable research into this class of compounds by characterizing the biosynthetic potential and evolutionary history of these BGCs across the Fungal Kingdom. We amalgamated a pipeline of tools to predict BGCs based on shared promoter motifs and located 3800 ICS BGCs in 3300 genomes, making ICS BGCs the fifth largest class of specialized metabolites compared to canonical classes found by antiSMASH. ICS BGCs are not evenly distributed across fungi, with evidence of gene-family expansions in several Ascomycete families. We show that the ICS dit1/2 gene cluster family (GCF), which was prior on

SUBMITTER: Nickles GR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10415135 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature