Nitrosopyridine Probe To Detect Polyketide Natural Products with Conjugated Alkenes: Discovery of Novodaryamide and Nocarditriene

An optimized nitroso-based probe that facilitates the discovery of conjugated alkene-containing natural products in unprocessed extracts was developed. It chemoselectively reacts with conjugated olefins via a nitroso-Diels–Alder cyclization to yield derivatives with a distinct chromophore and an isotopically unique bromine atom that can be rapidly identified using liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry and a bioinformatics tool called MeHaloCoA (Marine Halogenated Compound Analysis). The probe is ideally employed when genome-mining techniques identify strains containing polyketide gene clusters with two or more repeating KS-AT-DH-KR-ACP domain sequences, which are required for the biosynthesis of conjugated alkenes. Comparing the reactivity and spectral properties of five brominated arylnitroso reagents with model compounds spiramycin, bufalin, rapamycin, and rifampicin led to the identification of 5-bromo-2-nitrosopyridine as the most suitable probe structure. The utility of the dienophile probe was the...