Structures and Biosynthesis of Enediyne Natural Products

Copyright: © 2014 Rui Ji, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and production in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Enediyne natural products are important member of natural product family with strong DNA cleavage activity. This biological activity makes them excellent candidates for developing novel antibiotics and antitumor drugs. Highly unsaturated enediyne cores, sugar moieties and aromatic moieties are basic components of structures of enediyne natural products. Genes encoding enzymes responsible for enediyne natural product biosynthesis are clustered in enediyne gene clusters. Each gene cluster consists of dozens of genes that encode enzymes for biosynthesis of enediyne core, sugar moieties and aromatic moieties as well as tailing enzymes. Review Natural products produced by many plants, bacteria and fungi as secondary metabolites have been the major drug source for pharmaceutical industry for the last several decades [1]. Enediyne natural products discovered in 1980s are unique member among natural product family with potent DNA cleavage activity [2-4].