Chromosomal organization of biosynthetic gene clusters, including those of nine novel species, suggests plasticity of myxobacterial specialized metabolism.

Introduction: Natural products discovered from bacteria provide critically needed therapeutic leads for drug discovery, and myxobacteria are an established source for metabolites with unique chemical scaffolds and biological activities. Myxobacterial genomes accommodate an exceptional number and variety of biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) which encode for features involved in specialized metabolism.

Methods: In this study, we describe the collection, sequencing, and genome mining of 20 myxobacteria isolated from rhizospheric soil samples collected in North America.

Chromosomal organization of biosynthetic gene clusters suggests plasticity of myxobacterial specialized metabolism including descriptions for nine novel species: sp. nov., sp. nov., sp. nov., sp. nov., sp. nov., sp. nov., sp. nov., sp. nov., sp. nov.

Natural products discovered from bacteria provide critically needed therapeutic leads for drug discovery, and myxobacteria are an established source for metabolites with unique chemical scaffolds and biological activities. Myxobacterial genomes accommodate an exceptional number and variety of biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) which encode for features involved in specialized metabolism. Continued discovery and sequencing of novel myxobacteria from the environment provides BGCs for the genome mining pipeline.

Assessment of Evolutionary Relationships for Prioritization of Myxobacteria for Natural Product Discovery.

Discoveries of novel myxobacteria have started to unveil the potentially vast phylogenetic diversity within the family Myxococcaceae and have brought about an updated approach to myxobacterial classification. While traditional approaches focused on morphology, 16S gene sequences, and biochemistry, modern methods including comparative genomics have provided a more thorough assessment of myxobacterial taxonomy. Herein, we utilize long-read genome sequencing for two myxobacteria previously classified as and , as well as four environmental myxobacteria newly isolated for this study.