Generation and study of the strains of streptomycetes - heterologous hosts for production of moenomycin.

Moenomycins (Mm) are family of phosphoglycolipid natural products that is considered a blueprint to develop new class of antibiotics. The natural Mm producer, (ATCC14672), produces very low amounts of moenomycin, fueling the investigations on genetic approaches to improve its titers. Heterologous expression of moenomycin biosynthesis gene cluster () would be one of the ways to reach this goal. Here we report the generation of a number of novel heterologous streptomycete hosts producing nosokomycin A (one of the members of Mm family), and determine their potential for the antibiotic production. The point mutation in the model strain of genetics, (strain M1152) significantly improved nosokomycin A production compared to parental strains (M145 and M512), while double mutation in the same species (strain M1154) decreased it. Our results point to the previously unanticipated epistatic interactions between mutations that individually are known to be highly beneficial for antibiotic production. We also showed here for the first time that facultative chemolitotrophic streptomycete and chloramphenicol producer can be used as the hosts for genes.