Control of β-Branching in Kalimantacin Biosynthesis: Application of ¹³ C NMR to Polyketide Programming

The presence of β-branches in the structure of polyketides that possess potent biological activity underpins the widespread importance of this structural feature. Kalimantacin is a polyketide antibiotic with selective activity against staphylococci, and its biosynthesis involves the unprecedented incorporation of three different and sequential β-branching modifications. We use purified single and multi-domain enzyme components of the kalimantacin biosynthetic machinery to address in vitro how the pattern of β-branching in kalimantacin is controlled. Robust discrimination of enzyme products required the development of a generalisable assay that takes advantage of ¹³ C NMR of a single ¹³ C label incorporated into key biosynthetic mimics combined with favourable dynamic properties of an acyl carrier protein. We report a previously unassigned modular enoyl-CoA hydratase (mECH) domain and the assembly of enzyme constructs and cascades that are able to generate each specific β-branch.