Biosynthetic short activation of the 2,3,6-trideoxysugar l-rhodinose

The successful incorporation of non-activated [2,3- 2 H 2 ]-L-rhodinose 4b into landomycin A 7 proves the existence of a short activation pathway for L-rhodinose 4; this result provides evidence of a general saving pathway for deoxy-sugar building blocks and their biosynthetic intermediates, respectively, which become accidentally deactivated during the biosynthetic deoxygenation cascades.