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Antibiotics are secondary metabolites (SMs) produced by certain bacteria and fungi that are not necessary for growth, development or reproduction, but in the natural environment they provide an advantage in competing for nutrients or defending against predators
Actinomycetes canThousands of secondary metabolites (SMs) are produced, the number of which is far greater than the class of compounds that have been isolated from these microorganisms.
Summary
Researchers from the University of Vienna, Austria, and Yunnan University performed sequencing analysis on the antibacterial actinomycete strain YIM 121038 isolated from tropical rainforest soil samples collected in Yunnan Province, China
Since strain YIM 121038 exhibited antibacterial activity, the authors performed repeated reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis of its extracts and found two compounds related to antibacterial activity, one of which was structurally related to the antibiotic desertomycin A (desertomycin A).
The desertomycin biosynthetic gene cluster (BGC) in strain YIM 121038 was further identified by genome sequencing analysis, but it was found to lack the gene encoding an acyltransferase and could not explain the production of desertomycin
This study reports that an enzyme involved in siderophore biosynthesis may also simultaneously have the ability to modify and inactivate a variety of structurally diverse antibiotics
