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Updated: Aug 2, 2025

Antimicrobial Peptides Produced by Selective Pressure Incorporation of Non-canonical Amino Acids
Published on: May 4, 2018
Genomic and metabolic analyses reveal antagonistic lanthipeptides in archaea
Haoyu Liang1,2, Zhi-Man Song1,2,3, Zheng Zhong1
1Department of Chemistry and The Swire Institute of Marine Science, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, China.
Background:
Microbes produce diverse secondary metabolites (SMs) such as signaling molecules and antimicrobials that mediate microbe-microbe interaction. Archaea, the third domain of life, are a large and diverse group of microbes that not only exist in extreme environments but are abundantly distributed throughout nature. However, our understanding of archaeal SMs lags far behind our knowledge of those in bacteria and eukarya.
Results:
Guided by genomic and metabolic analysis of archaeal SMs, we discovered two new lanthipeptides with distinct ring topologies from a halophilic archaeon of class Haloarchaea. Of these two lanthipeptides, archalan α exhibited anti-archaeal activities against halophilic archaea, potentially mediating the archaeal antagonistic interactions in the halophilic niche. To our best knowledge, archalan α represents the first lantibiotic and the first anti-archaeal SM from the archaea domain.
Conclusions:
Our study investigates the biosynthetic potential of lanthipeptides in archaea, linking lanthipeptides to antagonistic interaction via genomic and metabolic analyses and bioassay. The discovery of these archaeal lanthipeptides is expected to stimulate the experimental study of poorly characterized archaeal chemical biology and highlight the potential of archaea as a new source of bioactive SMs. Video Abstract.
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