Natural products are an important source of medicinal seeds. The discovery of novel biosynthetic enzymes from nature is important for their use as biocatalysts for the enzymatic synthesis of useful natural products. In addition, genetics and structural biology developments have enabled the engineering of enzymes for the production of unnatural analogs of bioactive natural products. In this review, I describe the recent research on these two topics, the exploitation of a novel secondary metabolite enzyme involved in the biosynthesis of the sulfonamide natural product antibiotic SB-203208, and the production of unnatural bioactive depsipeptides by reconstruction of the modular enzyme assembly lines in the microbial host.
Keywords: biosynthesis; enzyme; microbial production; natural product; pharmaceutical compound.