Reprogramming Nonribosomal Peptide Synthetases for Site-Specific Insertion of alpha-Hydroxy Acids.
Camus, A., Truong, G., Mittl, P.R.E., Markert, G., Hilvert, D.(2022) J Am Chem Soc 144: 17567-17575
- PubMed: 36070491 
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.2c07013
- Primary Citation of Related Structures:  
7YWJ, 7YWK - PubMed Abstract: 
High-throughput engineering has the potential to revolutionize the customization of biosynthetic assembly lines for the sustainable production of pharmaceutically relevant natural product analogs. Here, we show that the substrate specificity of gatekeeper adenylation domains of nonribosomal peptide synthetases can be switched from an α-amino acid to an α-hydroxy acid in a single round of combinatorial mutagenesis and selection using yeast cell surface display. In addition to shedding light on how such proteins discriminate between amino and hydroxy groups, the remodeled domains function in a pathway context to produce α-hydroxy acid-containing linear peptides and cyclic depsipeptides with high efficiency. Site-specific replacement of backbone amines with oxygens by an engineered synthetase provides the means to probe and tune the activities of diverse peptide metabolites in a simple and predictable fashion.
Organizational Affiliation: 
Laboratory of Organic Chemistry, ETH Zürich, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland.