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Updated: Jun 25, 2025

Enrichment of Bacterial Lipoproteins and Preparation of N-terminal Lipopeptides for Structural Determination by Mass Spectrometry
Published on: May 21, 2018
Biosynthesis of isonitrile lipopeptides
Kaimin Jia1, Helen Sun2, Yiyan Zhou3
1Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, United States; California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, United States.
Abstract:
Isonitrile lipopeptides discovered from Actinobacteria have attracted wide attention due to their fascinating biosynthetic pathways and relevance to the virulence of many human pathogens including Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Specifically, the identification of the new class of isonitrile-forming enzymes that belong to non-heme iron (II) and α-ketoglutarate dependent dioxygenases has intrigued several research groups to investigate their catalytic mechanism. Here we summarize the recent studies on the biosynthesis of isonitrile lipopeptides from Streptomyces and Mycobacterium. The latest research on the core and tailoring enzymes involved in the pathway as well as the isonitrile metabolic enzymes are discussed in this review.
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