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Microbial fatty acid biosynthetic enzymes are important targets for areas as diverse as antibiotic development to biofuel production. Elucidating the molecular basis of chain length control during fatty acid biosynthesis is crucial for the understanding of regulatory processes of this fundamental metabolic pathway. In Escherichia coli, the acyl carrier protein (AcpP) plays a central role by sequestering and shuttling the growing acyl chain between fatty acid biosynthetic enzymes. FabA, a β-hydroxyacyl-AcpP dehydratase, is an important enzyme in controlling fatty acid chain length and saturation levels. FabA-AcpP interactions are transient in nature and thus difficult to visualize. In this study, four mechanistic crosslinking probes mimicking varying acyl chain lengths were synthesized to systematically probe for modified chain length specificity of 14 FabA mutants. These studies provide evidence for the AcpP-interacting "positive patch," FabA mutations that alter substrate specificity, and the roles that the FabA "gating residues" play in chain length control., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The acyl carrier protein (ACP) requires posttranslational modification with a 4'-phosphopantetheine arm for activity, and this thiol-terminated modification carries cargo between enzymes in ACP-dependent metabolic pathways. We show that acyl-ACP synthetases (AasSs) from different organisms are able to load even, odd, and unnatural fatty acids onto E. coli ACP in vitro. Vibrio harveyi AasS not only shows promiscuity for the acid substrate, but also is active upon various alternate carrier proteins. AasS activity also extends to functional activation in living organisms. We show that exogenously supplied carboxylic acids are loaded onto ACP and extended by the E. coli fatty acid synthase, including unnatural fatty acid analogs. These analogs are further integrated into cellular lipids. In vitro characterization of four different adenylate-forming enzymes allowed us to disambiguate CoA-ligases and AasSs, and further in vivo studies show the potential for functional application in other organisms.

In the actinorhodin type II polyketide synthase, the first polyketide modification is a regiospecific C9-carbonyl reduction, catalyzed by the ketoreductase (actKR). Our previous studies identified the actKR 94-PGG-96 motif as a determinant of stereospecificity. The molecular basis for reduction regiospecificity is, however, not well understood. In this study, we examined the activities of 20 actKR mutants through a combination of kinetic studies, PKS reconstitution, and structural analyses. Residues have been identified that are necessary for substrate interaction, and these observations have suggested a structural model for this reaction. Polyketides dock at the KR surface and are steered into the enzyme pocket where C7-C12 cyclization is mediated by the KR before C9-ketoreduction can occur. These molecular features can potentially serve as engineering targets for the biosynthesis of novel, reduced polyketides., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Protein·protein interactions, which often involve interactions among an acyl carrier protein (ACP) and ACP partner enzymes, are important for coordinating polyketide biosynthesis. However, the nature of such interactions is not well understood, especially in the fungal nonreducing polyketide synthases (NR-PKSs) that biosynthesize toxic and pharmaceutically important polyketides. Here, we employ mechanism-based crosslinkers to successfully probe ACP and ketosynthase (KS) domain interactions in NR-PKSs. We found that crosslinking efficiency is closely correlated with the strength of ACP·KS interactions and that KS demonstrates strong starter unit selectivity. We further identified positively charged surface residues by KS mutagenesis, which mediates key interactions with the negatively charged ACP surface. Such complementary/matching contact pairs can serve as "adapter surfaces" for future efforts to generate new polyketides using NR-PKSs., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The natural product CJ-15,801 is an inhibitor of Staphylococcus aureus, but not other bacteria. Its close structural resemblance to pantothenic acid, the vitamin precursor of coenzyme A (CoA), and its Michael acceptor moiety suggest that it irreversibly inhibits an enzyme involved in CoA biosynthesis or utilization. However, its mode of action and the basis for its specificity have not been elucidated to date. We demonstrate that CJ-15,801 is transformed by the uniquely selective S. aureus pantothenate kinase, the first CoA biosynthetic enzyme, into a substrate for the next enzyme, phosphopantothenoylcysteine synthetase, which is inhibited through formation of a tight-binding structural mimic of its native reaction intermediate. These findings reveal CJ-15,801 as a vitamin biosynthetic pathway antimetabolite with a mechanism similar to that of the sulfonamide antibiotics and highlight CoA biosynthesis as a viable antimicrobial drug target., (Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Selective protein-protein interactions between nonribosomal peptide synthetase (NRPS) proteins, governed by communication-mediating (COM) domains, are responsible for proper translocation of biosynthetic intermediates to produce the natural product. In this study, we developed a crosslinking assay, utilizing bioorthogonal probes compatible with carrier protein modification, for probing the protein interactions between COM domains of NRPS enzymes. Employing the Huisgen 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition of azides and alkynes, we examined crosslinking of cognate NRPS modules within the tyrocidine pathway and demonstrated the sensitivity of our panel of crosslinking probes toward the selective protein interactions of compatible COM domains. These studies indicate that copper-free crosslinking substrates uniquely offer a diagnostic probe for protein-protein interactions. Likewise, these crosslinking probes serve as ideal chemical tools for structural studies between NRPS modules where functional assays are lacking.

Engineering biosynthetic pathways into suitable host organisms has become an attractive venue for the design, evaluation, and production of small molecule therapeutics. Polyketide (PK) and nonribosomal peptide (NRP) synthases have been of particular interest due to their modular structure, yet routine cloning and expression of these enzymes remains challenging. Here we describe a method to covalently label carrier proteins from PK and NRP synthases using the enzymatic transfer of a modified coenzyme A analog by a 4'-phosphopantetheinyltransferase. Using this method, carrier proteins can be loaded with single fluorescent or affinity reporters, providing novel entry for protein visualization, Western blot identification, and affinity purification. Application of these methods provides an ideal tool to track and quantify metabolically engineered pathways. Such techniques are valuable to measure protein expression, solubility, activity, and native posttranslational modification events in heterologous systems.

Several medically and agriculturally important natural products contain pyrrole moieties. Precursor labeling studies of some of these natural products have shown that L-proline can serve as the biosynthetic precursor for these moieties, including those found in coumermycin A(1), pyoluteorin, and one of the pyrroles of undecylprodigiosin. This suggests a novel mechanism for pyrrole biosynthesis. The biosynthetic gene clusters for these three natural products each encode proteins homologous to adenylation (A) and peptidyl carrier protein (PCP) domains of nonribosomal peptide synthetases in addition to novel acyl-CoA dehydrogenases. Here we show that the three proteins from the undecylprodigiosin and pyoluteorin biosynthetic pathways are sufficient for the conversion of L-proline to pyrrolyl-2-carboxyl-S-PCP. This establishes a novel mechanism for pyrrole biosynthesis and extends the hypothesis that organisms use A/PCP pairs to partition an amino acid into secondary metabolism.