Cameo appearances of aminoacyl-tRNA in natural product biosynthesis.

Emily C Ulrich, Wilfred A van der Donk

Journal: Current opinion in chemical biology 2017;35():29-36

PMID: 27599269

Free Full Text on PubMed Central View on PubMed

Abstract

The breadth of unprecedented enzymatic reactions performed during the formation of microbial natural products has continued to expand as new biosynthetic gene clusters are unearthed by genome mining. Enzymes that use aminoacyl-tRNA (aa-tRNA) outside of the translation machinery have been known for decades, and accounts of their use in natural product biosynthesis are just beginning to accumulate. This review will highlight the recent discoveries and advances in our mechanistic understanding of aa-tRNA-dependent enzymes that play key roles in the biosynthesis of a growing number of microbial natural products.

Address: Department of Chemistry and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 600 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801, USA; Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1206 West Gregory Drive, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.; Department of Chemistry and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 600 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801, USA; Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1206 West Gregory Drive, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. Electronic address: [email protected].

DOI: 10.1016/j.cbpa.2016.08.018