The First One-Pot Synthesis of l-7-Iodotryptophan from 7-Iodoindole and Serine, and an Improved Synthesis of Other l-7-Halotryptophans

A simple and scalable one-pot biotransformation enables direct access to l-halotryptophans, including l-7-iodotryptophan, from the corresponding haloindoles. The biotransformation utilizes an easy to prepare bacterial cell lysate that may be stored as the lyophilizate for several months and utilized as a catalyst as and when required. Smith, DRM, Willemse T, Gkotsi DS, Schepens W, Maes BU, Ballet … Read more

Natural Products: Discourse, Diversity, and Design

Natural Products: Discourse, Diversity and Design provides an informative and accessible overview of discoveries in the area of natural products in the genomic era, bringing together advances across the kingdoms.  As genomics data makes it increasingly clear that the genomes of microbes and plants contain far more genes for natural product synthesis than had been predicted … Read more

Optimisation of engineered Escherichia coli biofilms for enzymatic biosynthesis of l-halotryptophans

Engineered biofilms comprising a single recombinant species have demonstrated remarkable activity as novel biocatalysts for a range of applications. In this work, we focused on the biotransformation of 5-haloindole into 5-halotryptophan, a pharmaceutical intermediate, using Escherichia coli expressing a recombinant tryptophan synthase enzyme encoded by plasmid pSTB7. To optimise the reaction we compared two E. coli K-12 strains (MC4100 … Read more

Scope and potential of halogenases in biosynthetic applications

Smith DRM; Grüschow S; Goss RJM Curr Opin Chem Biol 2012, 17 (2) 276-283 A large and diverse series of halogenated natural products exist. In many of these compounds the halogen is important to biological activity and bioavailability. We now recognise that nature has developed many different halogenation strategies for which well-known enzyme classes such as haem … Read more

Crystallization and preliminary X-ray analysis of Pac17 from the pacidamycin-biosynthetic cluster of Streptomyces coeruleorubidus

Daniel R. Tromans ; Clare E. M. Stevenson ; Rebecca J. M. Goss ; David M. Lawson Acta Cryst 2012, F68 971-974 Pac17 is an uncharacterized protein from the pacidamycin gene cluster of the soil bacterium Streptomyces coeruleorubidus. It is implicated in the biosynthesis of the core diaminobutyric acid residue of the antibiotic, although its precise role is … Read more

Characterisation of spin coated engineered Escherichia coli biofilms using atomic force microscopy

Andreas N. Tsoligkas ; James Bowen ; Michael Winn ; Rebecca J. M. Goss ; Tim W. Overton ; Mark J. H. Simmons Colloids and Surfaces B: Biointerfaces 2012, 89 152-160 The ability of biofilms to withstand chemical and physical extremes gives them the potential to be developed as robust biocatalysts. Critical to this issue is their … Read more

Biofilms and their engineered counterparts: A new generation of immobilised biocatalysts

Michael Winn ; Joanne M. Foulkes ; Stefano Perni ; Mark J. H. Simmons ; Tim W. Overton ; Rebecca J. M. Goss Cat Sci Tech 2012, 2 1544-1547 The robust nature of biofilms makes them medicinally difficult to treat, however this same property renders them an attractive method for protecting and immobilising enzymes for biotransformation. … Read more

The generation of “unNatural” products: Synthetic biology meets synthetic chemistry

Rebecca J. M. Goss ; Sreejith Shankar ; Antoine Abou Fayad Nat Prod Rep 2012, 29 870-889 Natural product analogue generation is important, providing tools for chemical biology, enabling structure activity relationship determination and insight into the way in which natural products interact with their target biomolecules. The generation of analogues is also often necessary in … Read more

Biogenesis of the Unique 4 ‘,5 ‘-Dehydronucleoside of the Uridyl Peptide Antibiotic Pacidamycin

Amany E. Ragab ; Sabine Grüschow ; Daniel R. Tromans ; Rebecca J. M. Goss JACS 2011, 133 (39) 15288-15291 The pacidamycins belong to a class of antimicrobial nucleoside antibiotics that act by inhibiting the clinically unexploited target translocase I, a key enzyme in peptidoglycan assembly. As with other nucleoside antibiotics, the pacidamycin 4′,5′-dehydronucleoside portion is … Read more