Enzyme-catalyzed [4+2] cycloaddition has been proposed to be a key transformation process in various natural product biosynthetic pathways. Recently Fsa2 was found to be involved in stereospecific trans-decalin formation during the biosynthesis of equisetin, a potent HIV-1 integrase inhibitor. To understand the mechanisms by which fsa2 determines the stereochemistry of reaction products, we sought an fsa2 homologue that is involved in trans-decalin formation in the biosynthetic pathway of an enantiomerically opposite analogue, and we found phm7, which is involved in the biosynthesis of phomasetin. A decalin skeleton with an unnatural configuration was successfully constructed by gene replacement of phm7 with fsa2, thus demonstrating enzymatic control of all stereochemistry in the [4+2] cycloaddition. Our findings highlight enzyme-catalyzed [4+2] cycloaddition as a stereochemically divergent step in natural product biosynthetic pathways and open new avenues for generating derivatives with different stereochemistry.
Keywords: biosynthesis; cycloaddition; decalin; fungal metabolite; natural products.
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