The assembly of large recombinant DNA encoding a whole biochemical pathway or genome represents a significant challenge. Here, we report a new method, DNA assembler, which allows the assembly of an entire biochemical pathway in a single step via in vivo homologous recombination in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. We show that DNA assembler can rapidly assemble a functional d-xylose utilization pathway (∼9 kb DNA consisting of three genes), a functional zeaxanthin biosynthesis pathway (∼11 kb DNA consisting of five genes) and a functional combined d-xylose utilization and zeaxanthin biosynthesis pathway (∼19 kb consisting of eight genes) with high efficiencies (70–100%) either on a plasmid or on a yeast chromosome. As this new method only requires simple DNA preparation and one-step yeast transformation, it represents a powerful tool in the construction of biochemical pathways for synthetic biology, metabolic engineering and functional genomics studies.

Polycyclic tetramate macrolactams (PTMs) are a widely distributed class of natural products with important biological activities. However, many of them have not been characterized. Here we apply a plug and play synthetic biology strategy to activate a cryptic PTM biosynthetic gene cluster SGR810-815 from Streptomyces griseus and discover three potential PTMs. This gene cluster is highly conserved in phylogenetically diverse bacterial strains and contains an unusual hybrid polyketide synthase-nonribosomal peptide synthetase (PKS-NRPS) which resembles iterative PKSs known in fungi. To further characterize this gene cluster, we use the same synthetic biology approach to create a series of gene deletion constructs and elucidate the biosynthetic steps for the formation of the polycyclic system. The strategy we employ bypasses the traditional laborious processes to elicit gene cluster expression and should be generally applicable to many other silent or cryptic gene clusters for discovery and characterization of new natural products.

No abstract

Natural products (secondary metabolites) are a rich source of compounds with important biological activities. Eliciting pathway expression is always challenging but extremely important in natural product discovery because individual pathway is tightly controlled through unique regulation mechanism and hence often remains silent in the routine culturing conditions. To overcome the drawback of the traditional approaches that lack general applicability, we developed a simple synthetic biology approach that decouples pathway expression from complex native regulations. Briefly, the entire silent biosynthetic pathway is refactored using a plug-and-play scaffold and a set of heterologous promoters that are functional in a heterologous host under the target culturing condition. Using this strategy, we successfully awakened the silent spectinabilin pathway from Streptomyces orinoci. This strategy bypasses the traditional laborious processes to elicit pathway expression and represents a new platform for discovering novel natural products.

Fosfomycin is a clinically utilized, highly effective antibiotic, which is active against methicillin- and vancomycin-resistant pathogens. Here we report the cloning and characterization of a complete fosfomycin biosynthetic cluster from Streptomyces fradiae and heterologous production of fosfomycin in S. lividans. Sequence analysis coupled with gene deletion and disruption revealed that the minimal cluster consists of fom1-4, fomA-D. A LuxR-type activator that was apparently required for heterologous fosfomycin production was also discovered approximately 13 kb away from the cluster and was named fomR. The genes fomE and fomF, previously thought to be involved in fosfomycin biosynthesis, were shown not to be essential by gene disruption. This work provides new insights into fosfomycin biosynthesis and opens the door for fosfomycin overproduction and creation of new analogs via biomolecular pathway engineering.