Chemical Elicitors Induce Rare Bioactive Secondary Metabolites in Deep-Sea Bacteria under Laboratory Conditions

Bacterial genome sequencing has revealed a vast number of novel biosynthetic gene clusters (BGC) with potential to produce bioactive natural products. However, the biosynthesis of secondary metabolites by bacteria is often silenced under laboratory conditions, limiting the controlled expression of natural products. Here we describe an integrated methodology for the construction and screening of an elicited and pre-fractionated library of marine bacteria. In this pilot study, chemical elicitors were evaluated to mimic the natural environment and to induce the expression of cryptic BGCs in deep-sea bacteria. By integrating high-resolution untargeted metabolomics with cheminformatics analyses, it was possible to visualize, mine, identify and map the chemical and biological space of the elicited bacterial metabolites. The results show that elicited bacterial metabolites correspond to similar to 45% of the compounds produced under laboratory conditions. In addition, the elicited chemical space is novel (similar to 70% of the elicited compounds) or concentrated in the chemical space of drugs. Fractionation of the crude extracts further evidenced minor compounds (similar to 90% of the collection) and the detection of biological activity. This pilot work pinpoints strategies for constructing and evaluating chemically diverse bacterial natural product libraries towards the identification of novel bacterial metabolites in natural product-based drug discovery pipelines.

Automated summary

The study describes an integrated methodology for the construction and screening of an elicited and pre-fractionated library of marine bacteria, using chemical elicitors to induce the expression of cryptic biosynthetic gene clusters. The results show that elicited bacterial metabolites correspond to around 45% of compounds produced under laboratory conditions, with a novel chemical space of around 70% or concentrated in the chemical space of drugs.