Exploiting the inherent promiscuity of the acyl transferase of the stambomycin polyketide synthase for the mutasynthesis of analogues

The polyketide specialized metabolites of bacteria are attractive targets for generating analogues, with the goal of improving their pharmaceutical properties. Here, we aimed to produce C-26 derivatives of the giant anti-cancer stambomycin macrolides using a mutasynthesis approach, as this position has been shown previously to directly impact bioactivity. For this, we leveraged the intrinsically broad specificity of the acyl transferase domain (AT ₁₂ ) of the modular polyketide synthase (PKS), which is responsible for the alkyl branching functionality at this position. Feeding of a panel of synthetic and commercially available dicarboxylic acid ‘mutasynthons’ to an engineered strain of Streptomyces ambofaciens (Sa) deficient in synthesis of the native α-carboxyacyl-CoA extender units, resulted in six new series of stambomycin derivatives as judged by LC-HRMS and NMR. Notably, the highest product yields were observed for substrates which were only poorly accepted when AT ₁₂ was transplanted into a different PKS module, suggesting a critical role for domain context in the overall functioning of PKS proteins. We also demonstrate the superiority of this mutasynthesis approach − both in terms of absolute titers and yields relative to the parental compounds − in comparison to the alternative precursor-directed strategy in which monoacid building blocks are supplied to the wild type strain. We further identify a malonyl-CoA synthetase, MatB_Sa, with specificity distinct from previously identified promiscuous enzymes, making it a useful addition to a mutasynthesis toolbox for generating atypical, CoA activated extender units. Finally, we show that two of the obtained (deoxy)-butyl-stambomycins exhibit antibacterial and antiproliferative activities similar to the parental stambomycins, while an unexpected butyl-demethyl congener is less potent. Overall, this works confirms the interest of biosynthetic pathways which combine a dedicated route to extender unit synthesis and a broad specificity AT domain for producing bioactive derivatives of fully-elaborated complex polyketides.