The neomycin biosynthetic gene cluster of Streptomyces fradiae NCIMB 8233: genetic and biochemical evidence for the roles of two glycosyltransferases and a deacetylase.

An efficient protocol has been developed for the genetic manipulation of Streptomyces fradiae NCIMB 8233, which produces the 2-deoxystreptamine (2-DOS)-containing aminoglycoside antibiotic neomycin. This has allowed the in vivo analysis of the respective roles of the glycosyltransferases Neo8 and Neo15, and of the deacetylase Neo16 in neomycin biosynthesis. Specific deletion of each of the neo8, neo15 and neo16 genes confirmed that they are all essential for neomycin biosynthesis. The pattern of metabolites produced by feeding putative pathway intermediates to these mutants provided unambiguous support for a scheme in which Neo8 and Neo15, whose three-dimensional structures are predicted to be highly similar, have distinct roles: Neo8 catalyses transfer of N-acetylglucosamine to 2-DOS early in the pathway, while Neo15 catalyses transfer of the same aminosugar to ribostamycin later in the pathway. The in vitro substrate specificity of Neo15, purified from recombinant Escherichia coli, was fully consistent with these findings. The in vitro activity of Neo16, the only deacetylase so far recognised in the neo gene cluster, showed that it is capable of acting in tandem with both Neo8 and Neo15 as previously proposed. However, the deacetylation of N-acetylglucosaminylribostamycin was still observed in a strain deleted of the neo16 gene and fed with suitable pathway precursors, providing evidence for the existence of a second enzyme in S. fradiae with this activity.