- Authors: Costa M, Sampaio-Dias IE, Castelo-Branco R, Scharfenstein H, Rezende de Castro R, Silva A, Schneider MPC, Araújo MJ, Martins R, Domingues VF, Nogueira F, Camões V, Vasconcelos VM, Leão PN
- Publication Year: 2019
- Journal: Journal of Natural Products
- Link: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30715888
Small, single-celled planktonic cyanobacteria are ubiquitous in the world’s oceans yet tend not to be perceived as secondary metabolite-rich organisms. Here we report the isolation and structure elucidation of hierridin C, a minor metabolite obtained from the cultured picocyanobacterium Cyanobium sp. LEGE 06113. We describe a simple, straightforward synthetic route to the scarcely produced hierridins that relies on a key regioselective halogenation step. In addition, we show that these compounds originate from a type III PKS pathway and that similar biosynthetic gene clusters are found in a variety of bacterial genomes, most notably those of the globally distributed picocyanobacteria genera Prochlorococcus, Cyanobium and Synechococcus.