Coelimycin Synthesis Activatory Proteins Are Key Regulators of Specialized Metabolism and Precursor Flux in Streptomyces coelicolor A3(2)

Many microbial specialized metabolites are industrially relevant agents but also serve as signaling molecules in intra-species and even inter-kingdom interactions. In the antibiotic-producingStreptomyces, members of the SARP (Streptomycesantibiotic regulatory proteins) family of regulators are often encoded within biosynthetic gene clusters and serve as their direct activators. Coelimycin is the earliest, colored specialized metabolite synthesized in the life cycle of the model organismStreptomyces coelicolorA3(2). Deletion of its two SARP activatorscpkOandcpkNabolished coelimycin synthesis and resulted in dramatic changes in the production of the later, stationary-phase antibiotics. The underlying mechanisms of these phenotypes were deregulation of precursor flux and quorum sensing, as shown by label-free, bottom-up shotgun proteomics. Detailed profiling of promoter activities demonstrated that CpkO is the upper-level cluster activator that induces CpkN, while CpkN activates type II thioesterase ScoT, necessary for coelimycin synthesis. What is more, we show thatcpkNis regulated by quorum sensing gamma-butyrolactone receptor ScbR.