Tandem mass spectrometry methods to accelerate the identification of phytotoxic metabolites produced by Streptomyces sp. 39 PL.

Natural products isolated by microorganisms are interesting in the search for new compounds with several biological activities. However, low concentration and structural diversity make the isolation a time-consuming step. Tandem mass spectrometry is a well-established technology for the identification and characterization of target microbial natural products due to high sensitivity and selectivity of these experiments. We developed a method employing neutral loss experiments (LC-ESI-MS/MS) to identify luminacins in microbial crude extracts. The luminacins class exhibited conserved fragmentation pattern with loss at 172 Da relative to glycosides fragment and this loss was used in searching for compounds belonging to this class. Therefore, the crude extract produced by Streptomyces sp. 39 PL was analysed and five luminacins were isolated - one is a novel luminacin I at 466 Da.