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Updated: Jun 14, 2025

Mass Spectrometry-Guided Genome Mining as a Tool to Uncover Novel Natural Products
Published on: March 12, 2020
Genome Mining Reveals a Carboxyl O-Methyltransferase Gatekeeping the Biosynthetic Divergence of Tryptophan Dimers
Liang Ma1,2, Zhiwen Liu1, Wenjun Zhang1,2
1State Key Laboratory of Tropical Oceanography, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Marine Materia Medica, South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 164 West Xingang Road, Guangzhou 510301, China.
Abstract:
Bacterial tryptophan dimers comprise a large family of natural products with promising biological activities. Herein, we report the identification of a methyltransferase, SpmM1, which acts as a gatekeeping enzyme to govern the divergent biosynthesis of tryptophan dimers spiroindimicins (SPMs) and indimicins (IDMs) in Streptomyces marincola SCSIO 03032. Bioinformatics, genetic, and biochemical studies revealed that SpmM1-catalyzed carboxyl O-methylation enabled the common precursor of SPMs and IDMs to flux into the spiro-forming pathway to generate SPMs.
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