Enzymatic total synthesis of enterocin polyketides

Polyketides are clinically important natural products that often require elaborate organic syntheses owing to their complex chemical structures. Here we report the multienzyme total synthesis of the Streptomyces maritimus enterocin and wailupemycin bacteriostatic agents in a single reaction vessel from simple benzoate and malonate substrates. To our knowledge, our results represent the first in vitro assembly of a complete type II polyketide synthase enzymatic pathway to natural products.