Soil microbe naturally makes a compound scientists thought was synthetic
Yu J, Liang P, Wang J, Yang Q, Li W
Soil Health
The same class of soil bacteria that gives us antibiotics is now shown to produce a compound with real promise for greener, more targeted crop protection sprays.
Researchers found a bacterium living in soil, Streptomyces angustmyceticus, that produces benzohydroxamic acid on its own, a chemical that until now people assumed only came from a lab flask. They traced the whole assembly line inside the microbe: it starts with a common plant-related molecule called benzoic acid and uses three enzymes working together to build the final compound. When the team copied those three genes into E. coli bacteria, the new microbe could make the same compound, proving they'd found the complete recipe.
Key Findings
Benzohydroxamic acid (BHA) confirmed as a genuine natural product for the first time, isolated and structurally verified by NMR from Streptomyces angustmyceticus fermentation.
Deuterium-labeling experiments traced BHA's origin to benzoic acid, and the enzyme SaHAT converts benzoic acid directly (not benzoyl-CoA) into BHA using glutamyl hydroxamate as the hydroxamate donor in an ATP- and Mg2+-dependent reaction.
A minimal three-gene module (SaAmOx-AS, SaAmOx, SaHAT) was sufficient to reconstitute BHA production when coexpressed in E. coli, confirming the complete biosynthetic pathway.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists discovered that a soil bacterium naturally makes benzohydroxamic acid, a compound long used in labs and industry but never before found in nature, and they mapped out the exact three-gene toolkit the microbe uses to build it.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Biosynthesis of Benzohydroxamic Acid in Streptomyces angustmyceticus.
Benzohydroxamic acid (BHA) is an important hydroxamate scaffold with potential applications in medicinal chemistry and crop protection, but it has not previously been established as a natural produ...
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