Tuesday, August 3, 2010: 1:30 PM
Seacliff CD (Hyatt Regency San Francisco)
A combination of bioinformatics, microbiological, and chemical approaches have uncovered a novel family of natural products (NP). A hallmark of this family is the installation of thiazole and (methyl)oxazole heterocyles, which are derived from Cys and Ser/Thr residues of a ribosomally produced precursor peptide. The modifying enzymes responsible for biosynthesizing these heterocycles are found clustered in many bacterial and archaeal genomes. To date, we have identified nearly 300 orthologous biosynthetic gene clusters spanning 10 prokaryotic phyla. Within this 300, only a handful of the NPs have a known chemical structure or biological function. Of those with a known function, all exhibit toxin-like activity, either towards an animal host or other bacteria. This burgeoning NP family has been dubbed the thiazole/oxazole-modified microcins (TOMM). To explore uncharted areas of NP chemical space, we seek to determine the structures and functions of novel TOMMs.