Jaiyfungkhong Phakeovilay. Heterologous expression of the terrequinone a-like and alternapyrone biosynthetic gene clusters from menisporopsis theobromae BCC 4162. Master's Degree(Genetic Engineering and Bioinformatics). Kasetsart University. Office of the University Library. : Kasetsart University, 2021.
Heterologous expression of the terrequinone a-like and alternapyrone biosynthetic gene clusters from menisporopsis theobromae BCC 4162
Abstract:
There are several methods for drug discovery for example metabolite screening of new natural resources, genome mining and herterologous expression of cryptic natural product gene clusters. The latter is a combination of recombinant DNA technology, cloning and gene expression in the heterologous host. The heterologous expression has been used to produce many bioactive compounds and vaccines for human and animals. For natural products, their biosyntheses are catalyzed by a variety of enzymes. The benefit of biosynthetic studies is to understand how living organisms synthesize the compounds which could be further used for reconstruction of biosynthetic pathways. In this work, the seed fungus Menisporopsis theobromae BBC 4162 was selected for novel drug discovery by hetereologous expression of cryptic natural product biosynthetic gene clusters. Heterologous expression of natural product genes similar to those of terrequinone A from Aspergillus nidulans and alternapyrone from Alternaria solani was performed to produce novel compounds. Both terrequinone A and alternapyrone are invaluable metabolites exhibiting pharmaceutical values such as antibiotics, antimicrobial and anticancer activities. However, only the transformants containing a PKS gene similar to that of alternapyrone from A. solani could produce a metabolite which was later identified as alternapyrone, a highly methylated polyene α-pyrone. This PKS gene was then named altpks. Furthermore, five metabolites with structures related to alternapyrone were also identified by using UHPLC-QTOF-MS/MS technique. In addition, there are no novel compounds could be obtained from the heterologous expression of altpks with auxiliary genes, alt3- and alt4-like. This is expected to be a result of an intron remaining in alt4-like gene. Although the alternapyrone biosynthesis has been previously reported but its methylation programming remains unknown. Therefore, the effect of C-methyltransferase domain mutants of AltPKS was investigated and the results revealed the importance of C-methylation for the alternapyrone biosynthesis. The results from this work will provide us a better understanding on the C-methylation programming of highly methylated polyene α-pyrones.
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