Discovery and molecular engineering of sugar-containing natural product biosynthetic pathways in actinomycetes.

Significant progress has recently been made concerning the engineering of deoxysugar biosynthesis. The biosynthetic gene clusters of several deoxysugars from various polyketides and aminoglycosides-producing microorganisms have been cloned and studied. This review introduces the biosynthetic pathways of several deoxysugars and the generation of novel hybrid macrolide antibiotics via the coexpression of deoxysugar biosynthetic gene cassettes and the substrateflexible glycosyltransferases in a host organism as well as the production of TDP-deoxysugar derivatives via one-pot enzymatic reactions with the identified enzymes. These recent developments in the engineering of deoxysugars biosynthesis may pave the way to create novel secondary metabolites with potential biological activities.