Teigo Asai†*, Takashi Yamamoto†, Naoki Shirata†, Tohru Taniguchi‡, Kenji Monde‡, Isao Fujii§, Katsuya Gomi||, Yoshiteru Oshima†*
†Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Tohoku University, Aoba-yama, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8578, Japan, ‡Faculty of Advanc-ed Life Science, Frontier Research Center for Post-Genome Science and Technology, Hokkaido University, Kita 21 Nishi 11, Sapporo 001-0021, Japan, §School of Pharmacy, Iwate Medical University, Nishitokuta, Yahaba, Iwate 028-3694, Japan, ||Graduate School of Agricultural Science, Tohoku University, Sendai 981-8555, Japan
Epigenetic manipulation of gene expression in Chaetomium indicum using a HDAC inhibitor led to the isolation of structurally diverse chaetophenols, and 3, 4 and 5 bear unprecedented polycyclic skeletons. The expression of two silent genes (pksCH-1 and pksCH-2) for nonreducing PKSs involved in chaetophenol biosynthesis was associated with an increase of histone acetylation level. The heterologous gene expression study in Aspergillus oryzae revealed pksCH-2 to be the NR-PKS gene for 8.
