😉 that’s the nice thing about working across continents. Even when you are sleeping someone else is working on the project.

Through a great collaboration with @wildtypemc.bsky.social, we take a closer look at the macrocyclases across all lasso peptide BGC, and in particular, the split between canonical and non-canonical BGCs. A final thanks to Carlsberg Fonden for the funding.

The lasso peptide, gelatinamin, from B. gelatini contains an unusual additional macrocyclization similar to lariocidin recently reported by Wright et al. (doi.org/10.21203/rs....)

But even more surprisingly, we find normal canonical BGC that leads to very similar triculamin-like lasso peptides across Pseudomonadota and Bacilliota. We characterize one such lasso peptide from C. palmae produced in Burkholderia, and one from B. gelatini.

Now we show through heterologous expression in S. albus, that the biosynthesis is non-canonical and appear to need only a precursor peptide with a follower and a macrocyclase. And an acetyltransferase as a self-resistance gene.

Two years ago, we reported that triculamin and alboverticillin - two identical compounds isolated in the 1950-60's were in fact lasso peptides. Back then, we were puzzled by the biosynthesis, that didn't appear to follow the canonical lasso peptide logic. No leader peptide, no RRE, and no peptidase?

In general it’s very visually pleasing. The chemical structures throughout the book looks great, the inserted vignets have some cool examples etc