Coelichelin, a new peptide siderophore encoded by the Streptomyces coelicolor genome: structure prediction from the sequence of its non-ribosomal peptide synthetase.

A gene cluster for the non-ribosomal synthesis of a peptide of unknown structure has been identified in the partial genome sequence of Streptomyces coelicolor. Using molecular and computational analyses, the total structure of a tripeptide siderophore synthesized by the non-ribosomal peptide synthetase within the cluster has been deduced from the translated sequence of its encoding gene. This represents a novel method for the structural assignment of natural products from genome sequence data.