Biosynthetic pathway for high structural diversity of a common dilactone core in antimycin production.

We herein report comparative analysis of two versions of the biosynthetic gene clusters of antimycins, a natural product family possessing up to 44 distinct entities. The biosynthetic pathway of antimycins is amenable to the high structural variation of the substrates, supported by successes in heterologous expression of the ant cluster and in fluorine incorporation. The latter facilitated the investigation of the structure-activity relationship into the usually invariable 3-formamidosalicylic acid moiety of the molecules.