Expanding the fluorine chemistry of living systems using engineered polyketide synthase pathways

摘要

Organofluorines represent a rapidly expanding proportion of molecules used in pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, agrochemicals, and materials. Despite the prevalence of fluorine in synthetic compounds, the known biological scope is limited to a single pathway that produces fluoroacetate. Here, we demonstrate that this pathway can be exploited as a source of fluorinated building blocks for introduction of fluorine into natural product scaffolds. Specifically, we have constructed pathways involving two polyketide synthase systems and show that fluoroacetate can be used to incorporate fluorine into the polyketide backbone in vitro. We further show that fluorine can be introduced site-selectively and introduced into polyketide products in vivo. These results highlight the prospects for the production of complex fluorinated natural products using synthetic biology.