Here is a new natural product called Mollemycin A isolated by  an interdisciplinary group from Australia. It was recently described in Organic Letters.

Mollemycin A

Sorry the image is a bit small but it is a rather large compound. It has a disaccharide bit on the left, a sort of cyclic peptide in the middle and a polyketide unit on the right hand side. It was isolated from a marine derived Streptomyces sp. which was obtained from sediments collected from around South Molle Island Queensland. A high-throughput microbioreactor was used to create a library of bacteria. Within this collection was Mollemycin A which was isolated by methods including solvent extraction and reversed-phase chromatography and gave a reasonable amount of Mollemycin A.

Structure determination by the usual NMR techniques, COSY, HMBC, ROSEY, 13C, 1H. The proton spectra being measured at 900MHz! Look at the supplementary material the NMRs are displayed in their beauty. The amino acids were identified using C3 Marfey’s analysis. It was also evaluated in microbiological assays and was found to be very potent in inhibiting growth of Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria and drug resistant bacteria (IC50 in range of 10-50 nM). It also demonstrated significant anti-malarial activity at an IC50 of 9 nM.

Something for everyone, well carbohydrate chemistry, peptide/amino acid chemistry and the polyketide synthesis. That should keep a synthetic group going for a couple of grant applications. A very interesting structure and tremendous expertise in structure determination here as well. A great effort by all involved, congratulations.

The people and their respective institutes follow:

R. Raju, Z. G. Khali A. M. Piggott and R. J. Capon from The Institute for Molecular Bioscience, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Australia.

A. Blumenthal from The University of Queensland Diamantina Institute, The University of Queensland, Translational Research Institute, Woolloongabba, QLD, 4102, Australia and the Australian Infectious Diseases Research Centre, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia.

D. L. Gardiner and T. S. Skinner-Adams from Queensland Institute for Medical Research, Herston, QLD, 4006, Australia and the Eskitis Institute, Griffith University, Nathan, QLD, 4111, Australia

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