Structure-based gene targeting discovery of sphaerimicin, a bacterial translocase I inhibitor

S-Adenosylmethionine: more than just a methyl donor

Covering: from 2000 up to the very early part of 2023S-Adenosyl-L-methionine (SAM) is a naturally occurring trialkyl sulfonium molecule that is typically associated with biological methyltransfer reactions. However, SAM is also known to donate methylene, aminocarboxypropyl, adenosyl and amino moieties during natural product biosynthetic reactions. The reaction scope is further expanded as SAM itself can be modified prior to the group transfer such that a SAM-derived carboxymethyl or aminopropyl moiety can also be transferred. Moreover, the sulfonium cation in SAM has itself been found to be critical for several other enzymatic transformations. Thus, while many SAM-dependent enzymes are characterized by a methyltransferase fold, not all of them are necessarily methyltransferases. Furthermore, other SAM-dependent enzymes do not possess such a structural feature suggesting diversification along different evolutionary lineages. Despite the biological versatility of SAM, it nevertheless parallels the chemistry of sulfonium compounds used in organic synthesis. The question thus becomes how enzymes catalyze distinct transformations via subtle differences in their active sites. This review summarizes recent advances in the discovery of novel SAM utilizing enzymes that rely on Lewis acid/base chemistry as opposed to radical mechanisms of catalysis. The examples are categorized based on the presence of a methyltransferase fold and the role played by SAM within the context of known sulfonium chemistry.

Biosynthesis and Genome Mining Potentials of Nucleoside Natural Products

Nucleoside natural products show diverse biological activities and serve as leads for various application purposes, including human and veterinary medicine and agriculture. Studies in the past decade revealed that these nucleosides are biosynthesized through divergent mechanisms, in which early steps of the pathways can be classified into two types (C5' oxidation and C5' radical extension), while the structural diversity is created by downstream tailoring enzymes. Based on this biosynthetic logic, we investigated the genome mining discovery potentials of these nucleosides using the two enzymes representing the two types of C5' modifications: LipL-type α-ketoglutarate (α-KG) and Fe-dependent oxygenases and NikJ-type radical S-adenosyl-L-methionine (SAM) enzymes. The results suggest that this approach allows discovery of putative nucleoside biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) and the prediction of the core nucleoside structures. The results also revealed the distribution of these pathways in nature and implied the possibility of future genome mining discovery of novel nucleoside natural products.

Computational Approaches to Enzyme Inhibition by Marine Natural Products in the Search for New Drugs

The exploration of biologically relevant chemical space for the discovery of small bioactive molecules present in marine organisms has led not only to important advances in certain therapeutic areas, but also to a better understanding of many life processes. The still largely untapped reservoir of countless metabolites that play biological roles in marine invertebrates and microorganisms opens new avenues and poses new challenges for research. Computational technologies provide the means to (i) organize chemical and biological information in easily searchable and hyperlinked databases and knowledgebases; (ii) carry out cheminformatic analyses on natural products; (iii) mine microbial genomes for known and cryptic biosynthetic pathways; (iv) explore global networks that connect active compounds to their targets (often including enzymes); (v) solve structures of ligands, targets, and their respective complexes using X-ray crystallography and NMR techniques, thus enabling virtual screening and structure-based drug design; and (vi) build molecular models to simulate ligand binding and understand mechanisms of action in atomic detail. Marine natural products are viewed today not only as potential drugs, but also as an invaluable source of chemical inspiration for the development of novel chemotypes to be used in chemical biology and medicinal chemistry research.

Synthesis of macrocyclic nucleoside antibacterials and their interactions with MraY

The development of new antibacterial drugs with different mechanisms of action is urgently needed to address antimicrobial resistance. MraY is an essential membrane enzyme required for bacterial cell wall synthesis. Sphaerimicins are naturally occurring macrocyclic nucleoside inhibitors of MraY and are considered a promising target in antibacterial discovery. However, developing sphaerimicins as antibacterials has been challenging due to their complex macrocyclic structures. In this study, we construct their characteristic macrocyclic skeleton via two key reactions. Having then determined the structure of a sphaerimicin analogue bound to MraY, we use a structure-guided approach to design simplified sphaerimicin analogues. These analogues retain potency against MraY and exhibit potent antibacterial activity against Gram-positive bacteria, including clinically isolated drug resistant strains of S. aureus and E. faecium. Our study combines synthetic chemistry, structural biology, and microbiology to provide a platform for the development of MraY inhibitors as antibacterials against drug-resistant bacteria.

Uranium versus Thorium: Synthesis and Reactivity of [η5 -1,2,4-(Me3 C)3 C5 H2 ]2 U[η2 -C2 Ph2 ]

The synthesis, electronic structure, and reactivity of a uranium metallacyclopropene were comprehensively studied. Addition of diphenylacetylene (PhC≡CPh) to the uranium phosphinidene metallocene [η5 -1,2,4-(Me3 C)3 C5 H2 ]2 U=P-2,4,6-tBu3 C6 H2 (1) yields the stable uranium metallacyclopropene, [η5 -1,2,4-(Me3 C)3 C5 H2 ]2 U[η2 -C2 Ph2 ] (2). Based on density functional theory (DFT) results the 5f orbital contributions to the bonding within the metallacyclopropene U-(η2 -C=C) moiety increases significantly compared to the related ThIV compound [η5 -1,2,4-(Me3 C)3 C5 H2 ]2 Th[η2 -C2 Ph2 ], which also results in more covalent bonds between the [η5 -1,2,4-(Me3 C)3 C5 H2 ]2 U2+ and [η2 -C2 Ph2 ]2- fragments. Although the thorium and uranium complexes are structurally closely related, different reaction patterns are therefore observed. For example, 2 reacts as a masked synthon for the low-valent uranium(II) metallocene [η5 -1,2,4-(Me3 C)3 C5 H2 ]2 UII when reacted with Ph2 E2 (E=S, Se), alkynes and a variety of hetero-unsaturated molecules such as imines, ketazine, bipy, nitriles, organic azides, and azo derivatives. In contrast, five-membered metallaheterocycles are accessible when 2 is treated with isothiocyanate, aldehydes, and ketones.

Heptose-containing bacterial natural products: structures, bioactivities, and biosyntheses

Covering: up to 2020Glycosylated natural products hold great potential as drugs for the treatment of human and animal diseases. Heptoses, known as seven-carbon-chain-containing sugars, are a group of saccharides that are rarely observed in natural products. Based on the structures of the heptoses, the heptose-containing natural products can be divided into four groups, characterized by heptofuranose, highly-reduced heptopyranose, d-heptopyranose, and l-heptopyranose. Many of them possess remarkable biological properties, including antibacterial, antifungal, antitumor, and pain relief activities, thereby attracting great interest in biosynthesis and chemical synthesis studies to understand their construction mechanisms and structure-activity relationships. In this review, we summarize the structural properties, biological activities, and recent progress in the biosynthesis of bacterial natural products featuring seven-carbon-chain-containing sugars. The biosynthetic origins of the heptose moieties are emphasized.

Identification and characterization of enzymes involved in the biosynthesis of pyrimidine nucleoside antibiotics

Covering: up to September 2020 Hundreds of nucleoside-based natural products have been isolated from various microorganisms, several of which have been utilized in agriculture as pesticides and herbicides, in medicine as therapeutics for cancer and infectious disease, and as molecular probes to study biological processes. Natural products consisting of structural modifications of each of the canonical nucleosides have been discovered, ranging from simple modifications such as single-step alkylations or acylations to highly elaborate modifications that dramatically alter the nucleoside scaffold and require multiple enzyme-catalyzed reactions. A vast amount of genomic information has been uncovered the past two decades, which has subsequently allowed the first opportunity to interrogate the chemically intriguing enzymatic transformations for the latter type of modifications. This review highlights (i) the discovery and potential applications of structurally complex pyrimidine nucleoside antibiotics for which genetic information is known, (ii) the established reactions that convert the canonical pyrimidine into a new nucleoside scaffold, and (iii) the important tailoring reactions that impart further structural complexity to these molecules.

Pyridoxal-5'-phosphate-dependent alkyl transfer in nucleoside antibiotic biosynthesis

Several nucleoside antibiotics are structurally characterized by a 5′′-amino-5′′-deoxyribose (ADR) appended via a glycosidic bond to a high-carbon sugar nucleoside, (5′S,6′S)-5′-C-glycyluridine (GlyU). GlyU is further modified with an N-alkylamine linker, the biosynthetic origins of which have yet to be established. By using a combination of feeding experiments with isotopically labeled precursors and characterization of recombinant proteins from multiple pathways, the biosynthetic mechanism for N-alkylamine installation for ADR-GlyU-containing nucleoside antibiotics has been uncovered. The data reveal S-adenosyl-l-methionine (AdoMet) as the direct precursor of the N-alkylamine, but unlike conventional AdoMet- or decarboxylated AdoMet-dependent alkyltransferases, the reaction is catalyzed by a pyridoxal-5′-phophosate (PLP)-dependent aminobutyryltransferase (ABTase) using a stepwise γ-replacement mechanism that couples γ-elimination of AdoMet with aza-γ-addition onto the disaccharide alkyl acceptor. In addition to utilizing a conceptually different strategy for AdoMet-dependent alkylation, the newly discovered ABTases require a phosphorylated disaccharide alkyl acceptor, revealing a cryptic intermediate in the biosynthetic pathway.

Recent advances in the biosynthesis of nucleoside antibiotics

Nucleoside antibiotics are a diverse class of natural products with promising biomedical activities. These compounds contain a saccharide core and a nucleobase. Despite the large number of nucleoside antibiotics that have been reported, biosynthetic studies on these compounds have been limited compared with those on other types of natural products such as polyketides, peptides, and terpenoids. Due to recent advances in genome sequencing technology, the biosynthesis of nucleoside antibiotics has rapidly been clarified. This review covering 2009-2019 focuses on recent advances in the biosynthesis of nucleoside antibiotics.

Caprazamycins: Biosynthesis and structure activity relationship studies

Cell wall biosynthesis represents a valid target for antibacterial action but only a limited number of chemical structure classes selectively interact with specific enzymes or protein structures like transporters of the cell envelope. The integral membrane protein MraY translocase is essential for peptidoglycan biosynthesis catalysing the transfer of the peptidoglycan precursor phospho-MurNAc-pentapeptide to the lipid carrier undecaprenyl phosphate, thereby generating the cell wall intermediate lipid I. Not present in eukaryotic cells, MraY is a member of the superfamily of yet not well-understood integral membrane enzymes which involve proteins for bacterial lipopolysaccharide and teichoic acid or eukaryotic N-linked saccharides biosynthesis. Different natural nucleoside antibiotics as inhibitors of MraY translocase have been discovered comprising a glycosylated heterocyclic pyrimidin base among other potential lipid-, peptidic- or sugar moieties. Caprazamycins are liponucleoside antibiotics isolated from Streptomyces sp. MK730-62F2. They possess activity in vitro against Gram-positive bacteria, in particular against the genus Mycobacterium including M. intracellulare, M. avium and M. tuberculosis. Structural elucidation revealed the (+)-caprazol core skeleton as a unique moiety, the caprazamycins share with other MraY inhibitors such as the liposidomycins, A-90289 and the muraminomicins. They also share structural features such as uridyl-, aminoribosyl- and fatty acyl-moieties with other MraY translocase inhibitors like FR-900493 and the muraymycins. Intensive studies on their biosynthesis during the last decade identified not only common initial biosynthetic steps, but also revealed possible branching points towards individual biosynthesis of the respective compound. Structural diversity of caprazamycins was generated by feeding experiments, genetic engineering of the biosynthetic gene clusters and chemical synthesis for structure activity relationship studies with its target, MraY translocase.

Total Synthesis of Caprazamycin A: Practical and Scalable Synthesis of syn-β-Hydroxyamino Acids and Introduction of a Fatty Acid Side Chain to 1,4-Diazepanone

The first total synthesis of caprazamycin A (1), a representative liponucleoside antibiotic, is described. Diastereoselective aldol reactions of aldehydes 12 and 25-27, derived from uridine, with diethyl isocyanomalonate 13 and phenylcarbamate 21 were investigated using thiourea catalysts 14 or bases to synthesize syn-β-hydroxyamino acid derivatives. The 1,4-diazepanone core of 1 was constructed using a Mitsunobu reaction, and the fatty acid side chain was introduced using a stepwise sequence based on model studies. Notably, global deprotection was realized using palladium black and formic acid without hydrogenating the olefin in the uridine unit.

Enzymatic Synthesis of the Ribosylated Glycyl-Uridine Disaccharide Core of Peptidyl Nucleoside Antibiotics

Muraymycins belong to a family of nucleoside antibiotics that have a distinctive disaccharide core consisting of 5-amino-5-deoxyribofuranose (ADR) attached to 6'- N-alkyl-5'- C-glycyluridine (GlyU). Here, we functionally assign and characterize six enzymes from the muraymycin biosynthetic pathway involved in the core assembly that starts from uridine monophosphate (UMP). The biosynthesis is initiated by Mur16, a nonheme Fe(II)- and α-ketoglutarate-dependent dioxygenase, followed by four transferase enzymes: Mur17, a pyridoxal-5'-phosphate (PLP)-dependent transaldolase; Mur20, an aminotransferase; Mur26, a pyrimidine phosphorylase; and Mur18, a nucleotidylyltransferase. The pathway culminates in glycosidic bond formation in a reaction catalyzed by an additional transferase enzyme, Mur19, a ribosyltransferase. Analysis of the biochemical properties revealed several noteworthy discoveries including that (i) Mur16 and downstream enzymes can also process 2'-deoxy-UMP to generate a 2-deoxy-ADR, which is consistent with the structure of some muraymycin congeners; (ii) Mur20 prefers l-Tyr as the amino donor source; (iii) Mur18 activity absolutely depends on the amine functionality of the ADR precursor consistent with the nucleotidyltransfer reaction occurring after the Mur20-catalyzed aminotransfer reaction; and (iv) the bona fide sugar acceptor for Mur19 is (5' S,6' S)-GlyU, suggesting that ribosyltransfer occurs prior to N-alkylation of GlyU. Finally, a one-pot, six-enzyme reaction was utilized to generate the ADR-GlyU disaccharide core starting from UMP.

Self-Resistance during Muraymycin Biosynthesis: a Complementary Nucleotidyltransferase and Phosphotransferase with Identical Modification Sites and Distinct Temporal Order

Muraymycins are antibacterial natural products from Streptomyces spp. that inhibit translocase I (MraY), which is involved in cell wall biosynthesis. Structurally, muraymycins consist of a 5'-C-glycyluridine (GlyU) appended to a 5″-amino-5″-deoxyribose (ADR), forming a disaccharide core that is found in several peptidyl nucleoside inhibitors of MraY. For muraymycins, the GlyU-ADR disaccharide is further modified with an aminopropyl-linked peptide to generate the simplest structures, annotated as the muraymycin D series. Two enzymes encoded in the muraymycin biosynthetic gene cluster, Mur29 and Mur28, were functionally assigned in vitro as a Mg·ATP-dependent nucleotidyltransferase and a Mg·ATP-dependent phosphotransferase, respectively, both modifying the 3″-OH of the disaccharide. Biochemical characterization revealed that both enzymes can utilize several nucleotide donors as cosubstrates and the acceptor substrate muraymycin also behaves as an inhibitor. Single-substrate kinetic analyses revealed that Mur28 preferentially phosphorylates a synthetic GlyU-ADR disaccharide, a hypothetical biosynthetic precursor of muraymycins, while Mur29 preferentially adenylates the D series of muraymycins. The adenylated or phosphorylated products have significantly reduced (170-fold and 51-fold, respectively) MraY inhibitory activities and reduced antibacterial activities, compared with the respective unmodified muraymycins. The results are consistent with Mur29-catalyzed adenylation and Mur28-catalyzed phosphorylation serving as complementary self-resistance mechanisms, with a distinct temporal order during muraymycin biosynthesis.

Actinomycetes: still a source of novel antibiotics

Covering: 2006 to 2017Actinomycetes have been, for decades, one of the most important sources for the discovery of new antibiotics with an important number of drugs and analogs successfully introduced in the market and still used today in clinical practice. The intensive antibacterial discovery effort that generated the large number of highly potent broad-spectrum antibiotics, has seen a dramatic decline in the large pharma industry in the last two decades resulting in a lack of new classes of antibiotics with novel mechanisms of action reaching the clinic. Whereas the decline in the number of new chemical scaffolds and the rediscovery problem of old known molecules has become a hurdle for industrial natural products discovery programs, new actinomycetes compounds and leads have continued to be discovered and developed to the preclinical stages. Actinomycetes are still one of the most important sources of chemical diversity and a reservoir to mine for novel structures that is requiring the integration of diverse disciplines. These can range from novel strategies to isolate species previously not cultivated, innovative whole cell screening approaches and on-site analytical detection and dereplication tools for novel compounds, to in silico biosynthetic predictions from whole gene sequences and novel engineered heterologous expression, that have inspired the isolation of new NPs and shown their potential application in the discovery of novel antibiotics. This review will address the discovery of antibiotics from actinomycetes from two different perspectives including: (1) an update of the most important antibiotics that have only reached the clinical development in the recent years despite their early discovery, and (2) an overview of the most recent classes of antibiotics described from 2006 to 2017 in the framework of the different strategies employed to untap novel compounds previously overlooked with traditional approaches.

Nature's combinatorial biosynthesis and recently engineered production of nucleoside antibiotics in Streptomyces

Modified nucleosides produced by Streptomyces and related actinomycetes are widely used in agriculture and medicine as antibacterial, antifungal, anticancer and antiviral agents. These specialized small-molecule metabolites are biosynthesized by complex enzymatic machineries encoded within gene clusters in the genome. The past decade has witnessed a burst of reports defining the key metabolic processes involved in the biosynthesis of several distinct families of nucleoside antibiotics. Furthermore, genome sequencing of various Streptomyces species has dramatically increased over recent years. Potential biosynthetic gene clusters for novel nucleoside antibiotics are now apparent by analysis of these genomes. Here we revisit strategies for production improvement of nucleoside antibiotics that have defined mechanisms of action, and are in clinical or agricultural use. We summarize the progress for genetically manipulating biosynthetic pathways for structural diversification of nucleoside antibiotics. Microorganism-based biosynthetic examples are provided and organized under genetic principles and metabolic engineering guidelines. We show perspectives on the future of combinatorial biosynthesis, and present a working model for discovery of novel nucleoside natural products in Streptomyces.

Nucleoside Derived Antibiotics to Fight Microbial Drug Resistance: New Utilities for an Established Class of Drugs?

Novel antibiotics are urgently needed to combat the rise of infections due to drug-resistant microorganisms. Numerous natural nucleosides and their synthetically modified analogues have been reported to have moderate to good antibiotic activity against different bacterial and fungal strains. Nucleoside-based compounds target several crucial processes of bacterial and fungal cells such as nucleoside metabolism and cell wall, nucleic acid, and protein biosynthesis. Nucleoside analogues have also been shown to target many other bacterial and fungal cellular processes although these are not well characterized and may therefore represent opportunities to discover new drugs with unique mechanisms of action. In this Perspective, we demonstrate that nucleoside analogues, cornerstones of anticancer and antiviral treatments, also have great potential to be repurposed as antibiotics so that an old drug can learn new tricks.

Muraymycin nucleoside-peptide antibiotics: uridine-derived natural products as lead structures for the development of novel antibacterial agents

Muraymycins are a promising class of antimicrobial natural products. These uridine-derived nucleoside-peptide antibiotics inhibit the bacterial membrane protein translocase I (MraY), a key enzyme in the intracellular part of peptidoglycan biosynthesis. This review describes the structures of naturally occurring muraymycins, their mode of action, synthetic access to muraymycins and their analogues, some structure-activity relationship (SAR) studies and first insights into muraymycin biosynthesis. It therefore provides an overview on the current state of research, as well as an outlook on possible future developments in this field.

Natural and engineered biosynthesis of nucleoside antibiotics in Actinomycetes

Nucleoside antibiotics constitute an important family of microbial natural products bearing diverse bioactivities and unusual structural features. Their biosynthetic logics are unique with involvement of complex multi-enzymatic reactions leading to the intricate molecules from simple building blocks. Understanding how nature builds this family of antibiotics in post-genomic era sets the stage for rational enhancement of their production, and also paves the way for targeted persuasion of the cell factories to make artificial designer nucleoside drugs and leads via synthetic biology approaches. In this review, we discuss the recent progress and perspectives on the natural and engineered biosynthesis of nucleoside antibiotics.

The Biosynthesis of Capuramycin-type Antibiotics: IDENTIFICATION OF THE A-102395 BIOSYNTHETIC GENE CLUSTER, MECHANISM OF SELF-RESISTANCE, AND FORMATION OF URIDINE-5'-CARBOXAMIDE

A-500359s, A-503083s, and A-102395 are capuramycin-type nucleoside antibiotics that were discovered using a screen to identify inhibitors of bacterial translocase I, an essential enzyme in peptidoglycan cell wall biosynthesis. Like the parent capuramycin, A-500359s and A-503083s consist of three structural components: a uridine-5'-carboxamide (CarU), a rare unsaturated hexuronic acid, and an aminocaprolactam, the last of which is substituted by an unusual arylamine-containing polyamide in A-102395. The biosynthetic gene clusters for A-500359s and A-503083s have been reported, and two genes encoding a putative non-heme Fe(II)-dependent α-ketoglutarate:UMP dioxygenase and an l-Thr:uridine-5'-aldehyde transaldolase were uncovered, suggesting that C-C bond formation during assembly of the high carbon (C6) sugar backbone of CarU proceeds from the precursors UMP and l-Thr to form 5'-C-glycyluridine (C7) as a biosynthetic intermediate. Here, isotopic enrichment studies with the producer of A-503083s were used to indeed establish l-Thr as the direct source of the carboxamide of CarU. With this knowledge, the A-102395 gene cluster was subsequently cloned and characterized. A genetic system in the A-102395-producing strain was developed, permitting the inactivation of several genes, including those encoding the dioxygenase (cpr19) and transaldolase (cpr25), which abolished the production of A-102395, thus confirming their role in biosynthesis. Heterologous production of recombinant Cpr19 and CapK, the transaldolase homolog involved in A-503083 biosynthesis, confirmed their expected function. Finally, a phosphotransferase (Cpr17) conferring self-resistance was functionally characterized. The results provide the opportunity to use comparative genomics along with in vivo and in vitro approaches to probe the biosynthetic mechanism of these intriguing structures.

Strain prioritization for natural product discovery by a high-throughput real-time PCR method

Natural products offer unmatched chemical and structural diversity compared to other small-molecule libraries, but traditional natural product discovery programs are not sustainable, demanding too much time, effort, and resources. Here we report a strain prioritization method for natural product discovery. Central to the method is the application of real-time PCR, targeting genes characteristic to the biosynthetic machinery of natural products with distinct scaffolds in a high-throughput format. The practicality and effectiveness of the method were showcased by prioritizing 1911 actinomycete strains for diterpenoid discovery. A total of 488 potential diterpenoid producers were identified, among which six were confirmed as platensimycin and platencin dual producers and one as a viguiepinol and oxaloterpin producer. While the method as described is most appropriate to prioritize strains for discovering specific natural products, variations of this method should be applicable to the discovery of other classes of natural products. Applications of genome sequencing and genome mining to the high-priority strains could essentially eliminate the chance elements from traditional discovery programs and fundamentally change how natural products are discovered.