Thirtieth Anniversary of the Discovery of Laxaphycins. Intriguing Peptides Keeping a Part of Their Mystery.

Lipopeptides are a class of compounds generally produced by microorganisms through hybrid biosynthetic pathways involving non-ribosomal peptide synthase and a polyketyl synthase. Cyanobacterial-produced laxaphycins are examples of this family of compounds that have expanded over the past three decades. These compounds benefit from technological advances helping in their synthesis and characterization, as well as in deciphering their biosynthesis. The present article attempts to summarize most of the articles that have been published on laxaphycins. The current knowledge on the ecological role of these complex sets of compounds will also be examined.

d-Peptidase Activity in a Marine Mollusk Detoxifies a Nonribosomal Cyclic Lipopeptide: An Ecological Model to Study Antibiotic Resistance.

In the marine environment, sessile cyanobacteria have developed chemical strategies for protection against grazers. In turn, herbivores have to circumvent these defenses and in certain cases even take advantage of them as shelter from their own predators. This is the case of Stylocheilus striatus, a sea hare that feeds on Anabaena torulosa, a cyanobacterium that produces toxic cyclic lipopeptides of the laxaphycin B family. S. striatus consumes the cyanobacterium without being affected by the toxicity of its compounds and also uses it as an invisibility cloak against predators. In this article, using different substrates analogous to laxaphycin B, we demonstrate the presence of an enzyme in the digestive gland of the mollusk that is able to biotransform laxaphycin B derivatives. The enzyme belongs to the poorly known family of d-peptidases that are suspected to be involved in antibiotic resistance.

Trichormamide C Structural Confirmation through Total Synthesis and Extension to Analogs.

The growing interest in marine natural substances as potential new drugs has made total synthesis a real asset for structure confirmation. Trichormamide C (1), a cyclic lipopeptide isolated from the cyanobacteria Oscillatoria sp., is characterized by the presence of nonproteinogenic amino acids in the sequence. Trichormamide C structural confirmation was carried out through the implementation of a flexible synthesis resulting in two new analogs (3 and 4).