Bioactivity-driven fungal metabologenomics identifies antiproliferative stemphone analogs and their biosynthetic gene cluster.

Introduction: Fungi biosynthesize chemically diverse secondary metabolites with a wide range of biological activities. Natural product scientists have increasingly turned towards bioinformatics approaches, combining metabolomics and genomics to target secondary metabolites and their biosynthetic machinery. We recently applied an integrated metabologenomics workflow to 110 fungi and identified more than 230 high-confidence linkages between metabolites and their biosynthetic pathways.

Design, Synthesis, and Mechanistic Studies of ()-3-Amino-5,5-difluorocyclohex-1-ene-1-carboxylic Acid as an Inactivator of Human Ornithine Aminotransferase.

Human ornithine aminotransferase (OAT), a pyridoxal 5'-phosphate (PLP)-dependent enzyme, has been shown to play an essential role in the metabolic reprogramming and progression of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). HCC accounts for approximately 75% of primary liver cancers and is within the top three causes of cancer death worldwide. As a result of treatment limitations, the overall 5-year survival rate for all patients with HCC is under 20%.

Terpenoid balance in unveiled by heterologous squalene synthase expression.

Filamentous fungi produce numerous uncharacterized natural products (NPs) that are often challenging to characterize due to cryptic expression in laboratory conditions. Previously, we have successfully isolated novel NPs by expressing fungal artificial chromosomes (FACs) from a variety of fungal species into . Here, we demonstrate a new twist to FAC utility wherein heterologous expression of a FAC in altered endogenous terpene biosynthetic pathways.

Correlative metabologenomics of 110 fungi reveals metabolite-gene cluster pairs.

Natural products research increasingly applies -omics technologies to guide molecular discovery. While the combined analysis of genomic and metabolomic datasets has proved valuable for identifying natural products and their biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) in bacteria, this integrated approach lacks application to fungi. Because fungi are hyper-diverse and underexplored for new chemistry and bioactivities, we created a linked genomics-metabolomics dataset for 110 Ascomycetes, and optimized both gene cluster family (GCF) networking parameters and correlation-based scoring for pairing fungal natural products with their BGCs.

TET-catalyzed 5-hydroxymethylcytosine regulates gene expression in differentiating colonocytes and colon cancer.

The formation of differentiated cell types from pluripotent progenitors involves epigenetic regulation of gene expression. DNA hydroxymethylation results from the enzymatic oxidation of 5-methylcytosine (5-mC) to 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5-hmC) by the ten-eleven translocation (TET) 5-mC dioxygenase enzymes. Previous work has mapped changes in 5-mC during differentiation of intestinal stem cells.

Tumor suppressors miR-143 and miR-145 and predicted target proteins API5, ERK5, K-RAS, and IRS-1 are differentially expressed in proximal and distal colon.

The colon differs regionally in local luminal environment, excretory function, and gene expression. Polycistronic microRNA (miR)-143 and miR-145 are downregulated early in colon cancer. We asked if these microRNAs (miRNAs) might be differentially expressed in the proximal vs.