Structure of a B12-dependent radical SAM enzyme in carbapenem biosynthesis.

Carbapenems are antibiotics of last resort in the clinic. Owing to their potency and broad-spectrum activity, they are an important part of the antibiotic arsenal. The vital role of carbapenems is exemplified by the approval acquired by Merck from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the use of an imipenem combination therapy to treat the increased levels of hospital-acquired and ventilator-associated bacterial pneumonia that have occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic1. The C6 hydroxyethyl side chain distinguishes the clinically used carbapenems from the other classes of ß-lactam antibiotics and is responsible for their low susceptibility to inactivation by occluding water from the ß-lactamase active site2. The construction of the C6 hydroxyethyl side chain is mediated by cobalamin- or B12-dependent radical S-adenosylmethionine (SAM) enzymes3. These radical SAM methylases (RSMTs) assemble the alkyl backbone by sequential methylation reactions, and thereby underlie the therapeutic usefulness of clinically used carbapenems. Here we present X-ray crystal structures of TokK, a B12-dependent RSMT that catalyses three-sequential methylations during the biosynthesis of asparenomycin A. These structures, which contain the two metallocofactors of the enzyme and were determined in the presence and absence of a carbapenam substrate, provide a visualization of a B12-dependent RSMT that uses the radical mechanism that is shared by most of these enzymes. The structures provide insight into the stereochemistry of initial C6 methylation and suggest that substrate positioning governs the rate of each methylation event.

Emerging Diversity of the Cobalamin-Dependent Methyltransferases Involving Radical-Based Mechanisms.

Cobalamins comprise a group of cobalt-containing organometallic cofactors that play important roles in cellular metabolism. Although many cobalamin-dependent methyltransferases (e.g., methionine synthase MetH) have been extensively studied, a new group of methyltransferases that are cobalamin-dependent and utilize radical chemistry in catalysis is just beginning to be appreciated. In this Concept article, we summarize recent advances in the understanding of the radical-based and cobalamin-dependent methyltransferases and discuss the functional and mechanistic diversity of this emerging class of enzymes.

Consecutive radical S-adenosylmethionine methylations form the ethyl side chain in thienamycin biosynthesis.

Despite their broad anti-infective utility, the biosynthesis of the paradigm carbapenem antibiotic, thienamycin, remains largely unknown. Apart from the first two steps shared with a simple carbapenem, the pathway sharply diverges to the more structurally complex members of this class of ß-lactam antibiotics, such as thienamycin. Existing evidence points to three putative cobalamin-dependent radical S-adenosylmethionine (RS) enzymes, ThnK, ThnL, and ThnP, as potentially being responsible for assembly of the ethyl side chain at C6, bridgehead epimerization at C5, installation of the C2-thioether side chain, and C2/3 desaturation. The C2 substituent has been demonstrated to be derived by stepwise truncation of CoA, but the timing of these events with respect to C2-S bond formation is not known. We show that ThnK of the three apparent cobalamin-dependent RS enzymes performs sequential methylations to build out the C6-ethyl side chain in a stereocontrolled manner. This enzymatic reaction was found to produce expected RS methylase coproducts S-adenosylhomocysteine and 5'-deoxyadenosine, and to require cobalamin. For double methylation to occur, the carbapenam substrate must bear a CoA-derived C2-thioether side chain, implying the activity of a previous sulfur insertion by an as-yet unidentified enzyme. These insights allow refinement of the central steps in complex carbapenem biosynthesis.

Exploring the role of conformational heterogeneity in cis-autoproteolytic activation of ThnT.

In the past decade, there have been major achievements in understanding the relationship between enzyme catalysis and protein structural plasticity. In autoprocessing systems, however, there is a sparsity of direct evidence of the role of conformational dynamics, which are complicated by their intrinsic chemical reactivity. ThnT is an autoproteolytically activated enzyme involved in the biosynthesis of the ß-lactam antibiotic thienamycin. Conservative mutation of ThnT results in multiple conformational states that can be observed via X-ray crystallography, establishing ThnT as a representative and revealing system for studing how conformational dynamics control autoactivation at a molecular level. Removal of the nucleophile by mutation to Ala disrupts the population of a reactive state and causes widespread structural changes from a conformation that promotes autoproteolysis to one associated with substrate catalysis. Finer probing of the active site polysterism was achieved by EtHg derivatization of the nucleophile, which indicates the active site and a neighboring loop have coupled dynamics. Disruption of these interactions by mutagenesis precludes the ability to observe a reactive state through X-ray crystallography, and application of this insight to other autoproteolytically activated enzymes offers an explanation for the widespread crystallization of inactive states. We suggest that the N→O(S) acyl shift in cis-autoproteolysis might occur through a si-face attack, thereby unifying the fundamental chemistry of these enzymes through a common mechanism.

Activation and silencing of secondary metabolites in Streptomyces albus and Streptomyces lividans after transformation with cosmids containing the thienamycin gene cluster from Streptomyces cattleya.

Activation and silencing of antibiotic production was achieved in Streptomyces albus J1074 and Streptomyces lividans TK21 after introduction of genes within the thienamycin cluster from S. cattleya. Dramatic phenotypic and metabolic changes, involving activation of multiple silent secondary metabolites and silencing of others normally produced, were found in recombinant strains harbouring the thienamycin cluster in comparison to the parental strains. In S. albus, ultra-performance liquid chromatography purification and NMR structural elucidation revealed the identity of four structurally related activated compounds: the antibiotics paulomycins A, B and the paulomenols A and B. Four volatile compounds whose biosynthesis was switched off were identified by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry analyses and databases comparison as pyrazines; including tetramethylpyrazine, a compound with important clinical applications to our knowledge never reported to be produced by Streptomyces. In addition, this work revealed the potential of S. albus to produce many others secondary metabolites normally obtained from plants, including compounds of medical relevance as dihydro-ß-agarofuran and of interest in perfume industry as ß-patchoulene, suggesting that it might be an alternative model for their industrial production. In S. lividans, actinorhodins production was strongly activated in the recombinant strains whereas undecylprodigiosins were significantly reduced. Activation of cryptic metabolites in Streptomyces species might represent an alternative approach for pharmaceutical drug discovery.

Autoproteolytic activation of ThnT results in structural reorganization necessary for substrate binding and catalysis.

cis-Autoproteolysis is a post-translational modification necessary for the function of ThnT, an enzyme involved in the biosynthesis of the ß-lactam antibiotic thienamycin. This modification generates an N-terminal threonine nucleophile that is used to hydrolyze the pantetheinyl moiety of its natural substrate. We determined the crystal structure of autoactivated ThnT to 1.8Å through X-ray crystallography. Comparison to a mutationally inactivated precursor structure revealed several large conformational rearrangements near the active site. To probe the relevance of these transitions, we designed a pantetheine-like chloromethyl ketone inactivator and co-crystallized it with ThnT. Although this class of inhibitor has been in use for several decades, the mode of inactivation had not been determined for an enzyme that uses an N-terminal nucleophile. The co-crystal structure revealed the chloromethyl ketone bound to the N-terminal nucleophile of ThnT through an ether linkage, and analysis suggests inactivation through a direct displacement mechanism. More importantly, this inactivated complex shows that three regions of ThnT that are critical to the formation of the substrate binding pocket undergo rearrangement upon autoproteolysis. Comparison of ThnT with other autoproteolytic enzymes of disparate evolutionary lineage revealed a high degree of similarity within the proenzyme active site, reflecting shared chemical constraints. However, after autoproteolysis, many enzymes, like ThnT, are observed to rearrange in order to accommodate their specific substrate. We propose that this is a general phenomenon, whereby autoprocessing systems with shared chemistry may possess similar structural features that dissipate upon rearrangement into a mature state.

Comparative analysis of a cryptic thienamycin-like gene cluster identified in Streptomyces flavogriseus by genome mining.

In silico database searches allowed the identification in the S. flavogriseus ATCC 33331 genome of a carbapenem gene cluster highly related to the S. cattleya thienamycin one. This is the second cluster found for a complex highly substituted carbapenem. Comparative analysis revealed that both gene clusters display a high degree of synteny in gene organization and in protein conservation. Although the cluster appears to be silent under our laboratory conditions, the putative metabolic product was predicted from bioinformatics analyses using sequence comparison tools. These data, together with previous reports concerning epithienamycins production by S. flavogriseus strains, suggest that the cluster metabolic product might be a thienamycin-like carbapenem, possibly the epimeric epithienamycin. This finding might help in understanding the biosynthetic pathway to thienamycin and other highly substituted carbapenems. It also provides another example of genome mining in Streptomyces sequenced genomes as a powerful approach for novel antibiotic discovery.

Definition of the common and divergent steps in carbapenem ß-lactam antibiotic biosynthesis.

Approximately 50 naturally occurring carbapenem ß-lactam antibiotics are known. All but one of these have been isolated from Streptomyces species and are disubstituted structural variants of a simple core that is synthesized by Pectobacterium carotovorum (Erwinia carotovora), a phylogenetically distant plant pathogen. While the biosynthesis of the simple carbapenem, (5R)-carbapen-2-em-3-carboxylic acid, is impressively efficient requiring only three enzymes, CarA, CarB and CarC, the formation of thienamycin, one of the former group of metabolites from Streptomyces, is markedly more complex. Despite their phylogenetic separation, bioinformatic analysis of the encoding gene clusters suggests that the two pathways could be related. Here we demonstrate with gene swapping, stereochemical and kinetics experiments that CarB and CarA and their S. cattleya orthologues, ThnE and ThnM, respectively, are functionally and stereochemically equivalent, although their catalytic efficiencies differ. The biosynthetic pathways, therefore, to thienamycin, and likely to the other disubstituted carbapenems, and to the simplest carbapenem, (5R)-carbapen-2-em-3-carboxylic acid, are initiated in the same manner, but share only two common steps before diverging.

Mutational analysis of the thienamycin biosynthetic gene cluster from Streptomyces cattleya.

The generation of non-thienamycin-producing mutants with mutations in the thnL, thnN, thnO, and thnI genes within the thn gene cluster from Streptomyces cattleya and their involvement in thienamycin biosynthesis and regulation were previously reported. Four additional mutations were independently generated in the thnP, thnG, thnR, and thnT genes by insertional inactivation. Only the first two genes were found to play a role in thienamycin biosynthesis, since these mutations negatively or positively affect antibiotic production. A mutation of thnP results in the absence of thienamycin production, whereas a 2- to 3-fold increase in thienamycin production was observed for the thnG mutant. On the other hand, mutations in thnR and thnT showed that although these genes were previously reported to participate in this pathway, they seem to be nonessential for thienamycin biosynthesis, as thienamycin production was not affected in these mutants. High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)-mass spectrometry (MS) analysis of all available mutants revealed some putative intermediates in the thienamycin biosynthetic pathway. A compound with a mass corresponding to carbapenam-3-carboxylic acid was detected in some of the mutants, suggesting that the assembly of the bicyclic nucleus of thienamycin might proceed in a way analogous to that of the simplest natural carbapenem, 1-carbapen-2-em-3-carboxylic acid biosynthesis. The accumulation of a compound with a mass corresponding to 2,3-dihydrothienamycin in the thnG mutant suggests that it might be the last intermediate in the biosynthetic pathway. These data, together with the establishment of cross-feeding relationships by the cosynthesis analysis of the non-thienamycin-producing mutants, lead to a proposal for some enzymatic steps during thienamycin assembly.

Non-heme iron oxygenases generate natural structural diversity in carbapenem antibiotics.

Carbapenems are a clinically important antibiotic family. More than 50 naturally occurring carbapenam/ems are known and are distinguished primarily by their C-2/C-6 side chains where many are only differentiated by the oxidation states of these substituents. With a limited palette of variations the carbapenem family comprises a natural combinatorial library, and C-2/C-6 oxidation is associated with increased efficacy. We demonstrate that ThnG and ThnQ encoded by the thienamycin gene cluster in Streptomyces cattleya oxidize the C-2 and C-6 moieties of carbapenems, respectively. ThnQ stereospecifically hydroxylates PS-5 (5) giving N-acetyl thienamycin (2). ThnG catalyzes sequential desaturation and sulfoxidation of PS-5 (5), giving PS-7 (7) and its sulfoxide (9). The enzymes are relatively substrate selective but are proposed to give rise to the oxidative diversity of carbapenems produced by S. cattleya, and orthologues likely function similarly in allied streptomyces. Elucidating the roles of ThnG and ThnQ will focus further investigations of carbapenem antibiotic biosynthesis.

Four enzymes define the incorporation of coenzyme A in thienamycin biosynthesis.

The enzymatic activities of three proteins encoded by the thienamycin gene cluster of Streptomyces cattleya (ThnR, ThnH, and ThnT) have been shown to incrementally cleave CoA to afford the active side-chain component of the beta-lactam antibiotic thienamycin. These results supersede proposals based on earlier radiochemical incorporation experiments. For 20 years it has been thought that cysteine was directly incorporated into the antibiotic. Specific, stepwise truncation of CoA to 4-phosphopantetheine, pantetheine, and finally cysteamine was observed with ThnR, ThnH, and ThnT, respectively, in a series of coupled enzymatic assays. Pantetheinylated carbapenams were synthesized to address possible thienamycin biosynthetic intermediates and were shown to be effective substrates for the pantetheine-cleaving enzyme ThnT. Finally, a fourth gene, thnF, was shown to encode a protein capable of N-acetylating a model compound containing cysteamine in the presence of acetyl-CoA, consistent with the production of the S. cattleya cometabolite, N-acetylthienamycin. Taken together, these four enzymes are proposed to siphon CoA from primary metabolism to create the side chains for the predominant S. cattleya carbapenems, thienamycin and N-acetylthienamycin, in a process likely to be general for the broader class of these antibiotics.

Identification of transcriptional activators for thienamycin and cephamycin C biosynthetic genes within the thienamycin gene cluster from Streptomyces cattleya.

Two regulatory genes, thnI and thnU, were identified in the thienamycin (thn) gene cluster from Streptomyces cattleya. ThnI resembles LysR-type transcriptional activators and ThnU belongs to the SARP family of transcriptional activators. Their functional role was established after independent inactivation by gene replacement together with transcriptional analysis involving reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Deletion of thnI abolished thienamycin production showing its involvement in thienamycin biosynthesis. Gene expression analysis applied to the thn gene cluster demonstrated that ThnI is a transcriptional activator essential for thienamycin biosynthesis that regulates the expression of nine genes involved in thienamycin assembly and export (thnH, thnJ, thnK, thnL, thnM, thnN, thnO, thnP and thnQ). Unexpectedly, the thnU disrupted mutant was not affected in thienamycin production but turned out to be essential for cephamycin C biosynthesis. Transcript analysis applied to early and late structural genes for cephamycin C biosynthesis (pcbAB and cmcI), revealed that ThnU is the transcriptional activator of these cephamycin C genes although they are not physically linked to the thn cluster. In addition, it was shown that deletion of thnI has an upregulatory effect on pcbAB and cmcI transcription consistent with a significant increase in cephamycin C biosynthesis in this mutant.

The biosynthetic gene cluster for the beta-lactam carbapenem thienamycin in Streptomyces cattleya.

beta-lactam ring formation in carbapenem and clavam biosynthesis proceeds through an alternative mechanism to the biosynthetic pathway of classic beta-lactam antibiotics. This involves the participation of a beta-lactam synthetase. Using available information from beta-lactam synthetases, we generated a probe for the isolation of the thienamycin cluster from Streptomyces cattleya. Genes homologous to carbapenem and clavulanic acid biosynthetic genes have been identified. They would participate in early steps of thienamycin biosynthesis leading to the formation of the beta-lactam ring. Other genes necessary for the biosynthesis of thienamycin have also been identified in the cluster (methyltransferases, cysteinyl transferases, oxidoreductases, hydroxylase, etc.) together with two regulatory genes, genes involved in exportation and/or resistance, and a quorum sensing system. Involvement of the cluster in thienamycin biosynthesis was demonstrated by insertional inactivation of several genes generating thienamycin nonproducing mutants.

Mutants of Streptomyces cattleya defective in the synthesis of a factor required for thienamycin production.

Thienamycin non-producing mutants of Streptomydes cattleya were identified that displayed a cross-feeding relationship. A diffusible product from one of these mutants (RK-11) resulted in restoration of thienamycin production when fed to cultures of another mutant (RK-4). In vivo radiolabeling experiments were conducted to test whether the RK-11 mutant produced a late biosynthetic intermediate which contained a carbapenem ring and a cysteaminyl and/or a hydroxyethyl side chain. Both [35S]cystine and [methyl-3H]methionine were used to label the RK-11 product which was then fed to RK-4 cultures. None of the thienamycin subsequently produced by RK-4 converter cells was labeled, implying the lack of either side chain of the thienamycin molecule in the RK-11 product. Further stability studies suggested that the RK-11 product does not contain a carbapenem ring. Additional feeding experiments with RK-4 cells also ruled out the possibility that the RK-11 product is a co-factor necessary for thienamycin production. It is concluded that the RK-11 product may regulate expression of the thienamycin gene cluster.

Mutagenesis of OA-6129 carbapenem-producing blocked mutants and the biosynthesis of carbapenems.

Streptomyces fulvoviridis A933 17M9 1501 is an A933 acylase-defective mutant derived from S. fulvoviridis A933 17M9 and thus produces the OA-6129 group of carbapenems and carbapenams. By further mutation of mutant 1501, 4 types of mutants (OA-6129 A + B1 + B2 producers; OA-6129 A + B2 producers; an OA-6129 A producer; non-producers) were obtained. The second type of mutant strains 4N 3607, 5NA 3949-40 and 5NE 252 proved useful for the fermentative production of carbapenem OA-6129 B2. These results of mutagenesis demonstrated that the sequence of carbapenem bioconversion in the horizontal route was hydroxylation at C-8----isomerization at C-6----sulfation at C-8 hydroxyl.

Biosynthesis of fluorothreonine and fluoroacetic acid by the thienamycin producer, Streptomyces cattleya.

An antimetabolite, THX, was isolated from fermentation broths of the thienamycin producer, Streptomyces cattleya, when the organism was grown in the presence of a fluorine-containing substrate. THX was subsequently identified as one of the four possible stereoisomers of 4-fluorothreonine. Inorganic fluoride or any one of a number of organofluorine compounds can be used as precursors of 4-fluorothreonine. In addition, 19F NMR has provided evidence that the organism synthesizes fluoroacetate under the same fermentation conditions. The in vitro antibacterial spectrum of 4-fluorothreonine is also presented.

Reverse transsulfuration and its relationship to thienamycin biosynthesis in Streptomyces cattleya.

Cystathionine gamma-lyase (EC 4.4.1.1) was purified from Streptomyces cattleya, an actinomycete which produces the unusual beta-lactam antibiotic thienamycin. The enzyme displays broad substrate specificity and is similar to gamma-lyases purified from other microorganisms. That the gamma-lyase functions in vivo to provide cysteine for antibiotic synthesis was shown by two types of experiments. First, cystathionine and methionine, as well as cysteine itself, are efficiently utilized by S. cattleya for thienamycin biosynthesis. Second, propargylglycine, a mechanism-based inactivator of cystathionine gamma-lyase in vitro, inhibits the synthesis of thienamycin in vivo. This inhibition can be substantially reversed by providing the cells with another source of cysteine, such as cystine.