Abstract (Expand)
The bacterial endosymbiont (Burkholderia rhizoxinica) of the rice
seedling blight fungus (Rhizopus microsporus) harbors a large number of cryptic
biosynthesis gene clusters. Genome mining and sequence … similarity networks based
on an encoded nonribosomal peptide assembly line and the associated pyrrole-
forming enzymes in the symbiont indicated that the encoded metabolites are unique
among a large number of tentative pyrrole natural products in diverse and unrelated
bacterial phyla. By performing comparative metabolic pro fi ling using a mutant
generated with an improved pheS Burkholderia counterselection marker, we found
that the symbionts ’ biosynthetic pathway is mainly activated under salt stress and
exclusively in symbiosis with the fungal host. The cryptic metabolites were fully
characterized as novel pyrrole-substituted depsipeptides (endopyrroles). A broader
survey showed that endopyrrole production is a hallmark of geographically distant
endofungal bacteria, which produce the peptides solely under symbiotic conditions.
Authors: Sarah Niehs, Benjamin Dose, Kirstin Scherlach, Sacha J. Pidot, Timothy P. Stinear, Christian Hertweck
Date Published: 8th Jul 2019
Publication Type: Not specified