Biosynthesis of astromicin and related antibiotics. I. Biosynthetic studies by bioconversion experiments.

Biosynthesis of astromicin, a unique pseudodisaccharide aminoglycoside antibiotic containing 1,4-diaminocyclitol component, was investigated by isolating a variety of possible precursor compounds from mutants of Micromonospora olivasterospora in which biosynthetic pathways for astromicin were blocked. Washed mycelia of M. olivasterospora mutants converted these compounds to astromicin, which was detected by thin-layer chromatography. Since astromicin possesses one glycyl and three methyl groups, [14C]glycine and [14C]methionine should be incorporated into precursors to form astromicin. To confirm the biosynthetic pathway, formation of labeled astromicin from the precursors was examined using [1-14C]-glycine or [methyl-14C]methionine. From above results, we propose the biosynthetic pathway for astromicin as shown in Fig. 2.