The novel phosphatase RosC catalyzes the last unknown step of roseoflavin biosynthesis in Streptomyces davaonensis.

The bacterium Streptomyces davaonensis produces the antibiotic roseoflavin, which is a riboflavin (vitamin B2 ) analog. The key enzyme of roseoflavin biosynthesis is the 8-demethyl-8-amino-riboflavin-5'-phosphate (AFP) synthase RosB which synthesizes AFP from riboflavin-5'-phosphate. AFP is not a substrate for the last enzyme of roseoflavin biosynthesis the N, N-dimethyltransferase RosA, which generates roseoflavin from 8-demethyl-8-amino-riboflavin (AF). Consequently, the roseoflavin biosynthetic pathway depends on a phosphatase, which dephosphorylates AFP to AF. Here we report on the identification and characterization of such an AFP phosphatase which we named RosC. The gene rosC is located immediately downstream of rosA and both genes are part of a cluster comprising 10 genes. Deletion of rosC from the chromosome of S. davaonensis led to reduced roseoflavin levels in the corresponding recombinant strain. In contrast to wild-type S. davaonensis, cell-free extracts of the rosC deletion strain did not catalyze dephosphorylation of AFP. RosC was purified from an overproducing Escherichia coli strain. RosC is the fastest enzyme of roseoflavin biosynthesis (kcat 31.3 ± 1.4 min-1 ). The apparent KM for the substrate AFP was 34.5 µM. Roseoflavin biosynthesis is now completely understood - it takes three enzymes (RosB, RosC and RosA) to convert the flavin cofactor riboflavin-5'-phosphate into a potent antibiotic.