Activation of paulomycin production by exogenous γ-butyrolactone signaling molecules in Streptomyces albidoflavus J1074.

The interspecies communication roles of γ-butyrolactones (GBLs) have been described for a long time but are still poorly understood. Herein, we analyzed more than 1000 Streptomyces strains and noticed a big quantitative gap between the strains with GBL biosynthetic genes and the strains with GBL receptor genes, which implies the wide-spread of GBLs as interspecies signals in Streptomyces and their great potential in the activation of silent natural product gene clusters. Streptomyces albidoflavus J1074, which has one GBL receptor gene but no GBL biosynthetic gene, was chosen as a target to study the possible interspecies communication roles of GBLs. At first, the GBL biosynthetic genes from Streptomyces coelicolor M145 were expressed in S. albidoflavus J1074, which enabled the S. albidoflavus strains to synthesize Streptomyces coelicolor butanolides (SCBs) and activated the production of paulomycins. Further studies showed that this activation process requires the participation of the GBL receptor gene XNR_4681. The results suggest that the expression of exogenous GBL biosynthetic genes can modulate the metabolisms of GBL non-producing strains, and this regulation role might be meaningful for silent gene cluster activation in Streptomyces. At final, we synthesized racemic-SCB2 and tried to simplify the activation process by adding SCB2 directly to S. albidoflavus J1074, which unfortunately failed to induce paulomycin production.

Paulomycin G, a New Natural Product with Cytotoxic Activity against Tumor Cell Lines Produced by Deep-Sea Sediment Derived Micromonospora matsumotoense M-412 from the Avilés Canyon in the Cantabrian Sea.

The present article describes a structurally novel natural product of the paulomycin family, designated as paulomycin G (1), obtained from the marine strain Micromonospora matsumotoense M-412, isolated from Cantabrian Sea sediments collected at 2000 m depth during an oceanographic expedition to the submarine Avilés Canyon. Paulomycin G is structurally unique since-to our knowledge-it is the first member of the paulomycin family of antibiotics lacking the paulomycose moiety. It is also the smallest bioactive paulomycin reported. Its structure was determined using HRMS and 1D and 2D NMR spectroscopy. This novel natural product displays strong cytotoxic activities against different human tumour cell lines, such as pancreatic adenocarcinoma (MiaPaca_2), breast adenocarcinoma (MCF-7), and hepatocellular carcinoma (HepG2). The compound did not show any significant bioactivity when tested against a panel of bacterial and fungal pathogens.