The biosynthetic pathway of the aminonucleoside antibiotic puromycin, as deduced from the molecular analysis of the pur cluster of Streptomyces alboniger.

The pur cluster which encodes the puromycin biosynthetic pathway from Streptomyces alboniger was subcloned as a 13-kilobase fragment in plasmid pIJ702 and expressed in an apparently regulated manner in the heterologous host Streptomyces lividans. The sequencing of a 9.1-kilobase DNA fragment completed the sequence of pur. This permitted identification of seven new open reading frames in the order: napH, pur7, pur10, pur6, pur4, pur5, and pur3. The latter is followed by the known pac, dmpM, and pur8 genes. Nine open reading frames are transcribed rightward as a unit in opposite direction to that of the pur8 gene which is expressed as a monocistronic transcript from the right-most end. napH encodes the known N-acetylpuromycin N-acetylhydrolase. The deduced products from other open reading frames present similarities to: NTP pyrophosphohydrolases (pur7), several oxidoreductases (pur10), the putative LmbC protein of the lincomycin biosynthetic pathway from Streptomyces lincolnensis (pur6), S-adenosylmethionine-dependent methyltransferases (pur5), a variety of presumed aminotransferases (pur4), and several monophosphatases (pur3). According to these similarities and to previous biochemical work, a puromycin biosynthetic pathway has been deduced. No cluster-associated regulatory gene was found. However, both pur10 and pur6 genes contain a TTA codon, which suggests that they are translationally controlled by the bldA gene product, a specific tRNA(Leu).