Genome Mining for Secondary Metabolites

The misuse of antibiotics on a global scale has led to an ever-growing antibiotic resistance crisis. Novel antimicrobial compounds are urgently needed. Microorganisms are considered to be one of the most prolific sources for natural product drugs including antibiotics. Developing novel genome mining approaches to harness the potential of the underexplored biosynthetic gene pathways and discover novel microbial natural products, is a potential antibiotic resistance crisis mitigation path. This group is located at the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS)

Leader

Selected Publications

  • Fu, Chengzhang; Keller, Lena; Bauer, Armin; Brönstrup, Mark; Froidbise, Alexandre; Hammann, Peter et al. (2015): Biosynthetic Studies of Telomycin Reveal New Lipopeptides with Enhanced Activity. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 137 (24), pp. 7692–7705. DOI: 10.1021/jacs.5b01794.
  • Fu, Chengzhang; Auerbach, David; Li, Yanyan; Scheid, Ullrich; Luxenburger, Eva; Garcia, Ronald et al. (2017): Solving the Puzzle of One-Carbon Loss in Ripostatin Biosynthesis. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 56 (8), pp. 2192–2197. DOI: 10.1002/anie.201609950.
  • Fu, Chengzhang; Sikandar, Asfandyar; Donner, Jannik; Zaburannyi, Nestor; Herrmann, Jennifer; Reck, Michael et al. (2017): The natural product carolacton inhibits folate-dependent C1 metabolism by targeting FolD/MTHFD. Nat. Commun. 8 (1), p. 1529. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-01671-5.
  • Fu, Chengzhang; Xie, Feng; Hoffmann, Judith; Wang, Qiushui; Bauer, Armin; Brönstrup, Mark et al. (2019): Armeniaspirol Antibiotic Biosynthesis. Chlorination and Oxidative Dechlorination Steps Affording Spiro4.4non-8-ene. Chembiochem 20 (6), pp. 764–769. DOI: 10.1002/cbic.201800791.
  • Huo, Liujie; Hug, Joachim J.; Fu, Chengzhang; Bian, Xiaoying; Zhang, Youming; Müller, Rolf (2019): Heterologous expression of bacterial natural product biosynthetic pathways. Nat. Prod. Rep. In press, DOI: 10.1039/c8np00091c.

Further Information

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A current overview of the team and further information about the research group can be found on the HIPS page.

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