Living GenoChemetics by hyphenating synthetic biology and synthetic chemistry in vivo

Sunil V. Sharma, Xiaoxue Tong, Cristina Pubill-Ulldemolins, Christopher Cartmell, Emma J. A. Bogosyan, Emma J. Rackham, Enrico Marelli, Refaat B. Hamed and Rebecca J. M. Goss ()
Additional contact information
Sunil V. Sharma: University of St Andrews
Xiaoxue Tong: University of St Andrews
Cristina Pubill-Ulldemolins: University of St Andrews
Christopher Cartmell: University of St Andrews
Emma J. A. Bogosyan: University of St Andrews
Emma J. Rackham: University of East
Enrico Marelli: University of St Andrews
Refaat B. Hamed: University of St Andrews
Rebecca J. M. Goss: University of St Andrews

Nature Communications, 2017, vol. 8, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Marrying synthetic biology with synthetic chemistry provides a powerful approach toward natural product diversification, combining the best of both worlds: expediency and synthetic capability of biogenic pathways and chemical diversity enabled by organic synthesis. Biosynthetic pathway engineering can be employed to insert a chemically orthogonal tag into a complex natural scaffold affording the possibility of site-selective modification without employing protecting group strategies. Here we show that, by installing a sufficiently reactive handle (e.g., a C–Br bond) and developing compatible mild aqueous chemistries, synchronous biosynthesis of the tagged metabolite and its subsequent chemical modification in living culture can be achieved. This approach can potentially enable many new applications: for example, assay of directed evolution of enzymes catalyzing halo-metabolite biosynthesis in living cells or generating and following the fate of tagged metabolites and biomolecules in living systems. We report synthetic biological access to new-to-nature bromo-metabolites and the concomitant biorthogonal cross-coupling of halo-metabolites in living cultures.

Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-00194-3 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:8:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-017-00194-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-00194-3

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().