Since the 1950s, natural products of bacterial origin were systematically developed to be used as drugs with a wide range of medical applications. The available treatment options for many diseases are still not satisfying, wherefore, the discovery of new structures has not lost any of its importance. Beyond the great variety of already isolated and characterized metabolites, Streptomycetes still harbor uninvestigated gene clusters whose products can be accessed using heterologous expression in host organisms. This works presents the discovery of a set of structurally novel secondary metabolites, dudomycins A to D, through the expression of a cryptic NRPS cluster from Streptomyces albus ssp. Chlorinus NRRL B-24108 in the heterologous host strain Streptomyces albus Del14. A minimal set of genes, required for the production of dudomycins, was defined through gene inactivation experiments. This paper also proposes a model for dudomycin biosynthesis.
Keywords: NRPS; Streptomyces; heterologous expression.