Directing Biosynthesis VI - Book of abstracts

Genome mining for unknown unknowns in fungi Yi Tang University of California, USA

Genome mining is a promising approach to discover new natural products from sequenced microbes. Current genome mining approaches rely on the presence of well-studied core enzymes such as PKS and NRPS to identify lead biosynthetic gene clusters. Here we present our discovery of "unknown unknown" natural products from fungi. These are natural products derived from biosynthetic pathways that do not contain a previously known core enzyme. As a result, the biosynthetic gene cluster do not provide clues to the structure of the natural product. We will present two examples of identifying new compounds from such pathways in fungi. In both examples, we characterized the new scaffold-forming enzymes, and use these as leads to mine additional pathways. Our results highlight potential to new natural products when we prioritize "unknown unknown" clusters.

K01

© The Author(s), 2022

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