Streptomycetes are the major natural source of clinical antibiotics. The enhanced secondary metabolite production of many streptomycetes by S-adenosylmethionine (SAM) in previous studies suggested the existence of a common SAM regulatory effect. We screened nine proteins using the phosphoprotein purification column from Streptomyces coelicolor. Among them, genes (SCO5477, SCO5113, SCO4647, SCO4885 and SCO1793) for five proteins were disrupted by insertion mutation. The undecylprodigiosin and actinorhodin productions were changed in all mutations. The SAM-induced enhancement of actinorhodin production was abolished by all mutations except SCO4885 mutation, which reduced the production of actinorhodin and undecylprodigiosin with SAM treatment. This study demonstrates that phosphoprotein affinity purification can be used as a screening method to identify the proteins involved SAM signaling. Keywords: actinorhodin; protein phosphorylation; S-adenosylmethionine; Streptomyces coelicolor; undecylprodigiosin
INTRODUCTIONStreptomyces is the major genus that produces useful antibiotics of natural origin. Secondary metabolite production in Streptomyces is usually strain specific; thus, it is difficult to develop a universal method to promote the production of secondary metabolites in most Streptomyces strains. 1,2 We observed that increased concentration of S-adenosylmethionine (SAM) by overexpression of SAM synthetase gene stimulated actinorhodin production in Streptomyces lividans, 3,4 and exogenous SAM treatment in culture media enhanced streptomycin production in S. griseus, 5 as well as other secondary metabolite production in many Streptomyces strains. 6 On the basis of these results, we sought to identify SAM-response proteins, which might be targets, to improve secondary metabolite production in many Streptomyces spp.SAM-enhanced secondary metabolite production in all tested actinomycetes suggested the existence of a common signal transduction pathway. To identify cellular proteins that regulate the SAM response, we hypothesized that changes in protein phosphorylation constitute part of the signal transduction of SAM responses in S. coelicolor, a model strain for actinomycetes. As a new approach to