Isolation and characterization of four polyether antibiotics, X-14889A, B, C, and D, closely related to lysocellin and the ferensimycins.

Streptomyces sp. X-14889 (NRRL 15517) has been found to produce a number of novel polyether antibiotics and an orange pigment. One of the antibiotics, X-14889B (3) was identified as ferensimycin A, which in turn is an isomer of the well-studied polyether antibiotic, lysocellin (1). Of the three other antibiotics, X-14889C (4) is a lower homolog of ferensimycin A and antibiotics X-14889A (2) and D (5) which are respectively the descarboxy and anhydro-descarboxy forms of this same molecule. The latter compound, X-14889D is of interest as it contains an ether bridge across the terminal tetrahydrofuranyl ring in an analogous relationship to that reported earlier for antibiotics X-14873A (6) and G.