Alternative production of avermectin components in Streptomyces avermitilis by gene replacement

The avermectins are composed of eight compounds, which exhibit structural differences at three positions. A family of four closely-related major components, A1a, A2a, B1a and B2a, has been identified. Of these components, B1a exhibits the most potent antihelminthic activity. The coexistence of the "1" components and "2" components has been accounted for by the defective dehydratase of aveAI module 2, which appears to be responsible for C22-23 dehydration. Therefore, we have attempted to replace the dehydratase of aveAI module 2 with the functional dehydratase from the erythromycin eryAII module 4, via homologous recombination. Erythromycin polyketide synthetase should contain the sole dehydratase domain, thus generating a saturated chain at the C6-7 of erythromycin. We constructed replacement plasmids with PCR products, by using primers which had been derived from the sequences of avermectin aveAI and the erythromycin eryAII biosynthetic gene cluster. If the original dehydratase of Streptomyces avermitilis were exchanged with the corresponding erythromycin gene located on the replacement plasmid, it would be expected to result in the formation of precursors which contain alkene at C22-23, formed by the dehydratase of erythromycin module 4, and further processed by avermectin polyketide synthase. Consequently, the resulting recombinant strain JW3105, which harbors the dehydratase gene derived from erythromycin, was shown to produce only C22,23-unsaturated avermectin compounds. Our research indicates that the desired compound may be produced via polyketide gene replacement.