4-Hydroxy Pyridones from Heterologous Expression and Cultivation of the Native Host.

4-Hydroxy pyridones are a class of fungi-derived polyketide-nonribosomal peptide products featuring a core of 4-hydroxy-2-pyridone which have a wide range of biological activities. Genome mining of in-house strains using polyketide synthase-nonribosomal peptide synthase as a query identified an endophyte sp. 49Y, which possesses a potential 4-hydroxy pyridone biosynthetic gene cluster. Heterologous expression in NSAR1 revealed that this gene cluster is functional and able to produce a rare type of 4-hydroxy pyridones called tolypyridones (compounds and ). sp. 49Y was grown in a variety of media which led to the isolation of six 4-hydroxy pyridones (-) and one pyrrolidone () from a rice culture, and compounds and showed antifungal activity. These latter compounds are different from those obtained by heterologous expression. This study shows that both heterologous expression and cultivation of the native host are complementary approaches to discover new natural products.