Discovery and synthetic refactoring of tryptophan dimer gene clusters from the environment.

ABSTRACT: Here we investigate bacterial tryptophan dimer (TD) biosynthesis by probing environmental DNA (eDNA) libraries for chromopyrrolic acid (CPA) synthase genes. Functional and bioinformatics analyses of TD clusters indicate that CPA synthase gene sequences diverge in concert with the functional output of their respective clusters, making this gene a powerful tool for guiding the discovery of novel TDs from the environment. Twelve unprecedented TD biosynthetic gene clusters that can be arranged into five groups (A-E) based on their ability to generate distinct TD core substructures were recovered from eDNA libraries. Four of these groups contain clusters from both cultured and culture independent studies, while the remaining group consists entirely of eDNA-derived clusters. The complete synthet

SUBMITTER: Chang FY 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3878720 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature