Distribution of dTDP-glucose-4,6-dehydratase gene and diversity of potential glycosylated natural products in marine sediment-derived bacteria

To investigate the distribution of dTDP-glucose-4,6-dehydratase (dTGD) gene and diversity of the potential 6-deoxyhexose (6DOH) glycosylated compounds in marine microorganisms, a total of 91 marine sediment-derived bacteria, representing 48 operational taxonomic units and belonging to 25 genera, were screened by polymerase chain reaction. In total, 84% of the strains were dTGD gene positive, suggesting 6DOH biosynthetic pathway is widespread in these marine sediment-derived bacteria. BLASTp results of dTGD gene fragments indicate a high chemical diversity of the potential 6DOH glycosylated compounds. Close phylogenetic relationship occurred between dTGDs involved in the production of same or similar 6DOH glycosylated compounds, suggesting dTGD can be used to predict the structure of potential 6DOH glycosylated compounds produced by new strains. In two cases, where dTGD shared ≥85% amino acid identity and close phylogenetic relationship with their counterparts, 6DOH glycosylated compounds were accurately predicted. Our results demonstrate that phylogenetic analysis of dTGD gene is useful for structure prediction of glycosylated compounds from newly isolated strains and can therefore guide the chemical purification and structure identification process. The rapid identification of strains that possess dTGD gene provides a bioinformatics assessment of the greatest potential to produce glycosylated compounds despite the absence of fully biosynthetic pathways or genome sequences.