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Isolation and Identification of an Anthracimycin Analogue from Nocardiopsis kunsanensis, a Halophile from a Saltern, by Genomic Mining Strategy

Journal Type:  Journal Paper
Journal:  Journal of Genomics, Vol. 6, 2018, Pg 63-73, doi:10.7150/jgen.24368
Pubmed:  29805716
Impact Factor:  2.402
Date of Acceptance:   25 Apr 2018

Modern medicine is unthinkable without antibiotics; yet, growing issues with microbial drug resistance require intensified search for new active compounds. Natural products generated by Actinobacteria have been a rich source of candidate antibiotics, for example anthracimycin that, so far, is only known to be produced byStreptomycesspecies. Based on sequence similarity with the respective biosynthetic cluster, we sifted through available microbial genome data with the goal to find alternative anthracimycin-producing organisms. In this work, we report about the prediction and experimental verification of the production of anthracimycin derivatives byNocardiopsis kunsanensis, a non-Streptomycesactinobacterial microorganism. We discoveredN. kunsanensisto predominantly produce a new anthracimycin derivative with methyl group at C-8 and none at C-2, labeled anthracimycin BII-2619, besides a minor amount of anthracimycin. It displays activity against Gram-positive bacteria with similar low level of mammalian cytotoxicity as that of anthracimycin.