Natural products, fluorinated Streptomyces cattleya

Murphy CD, Schaffrath C, O Hagan D (2003) Fluorinated Natural Products The Biosynthesis of Fluoroacetate and 4-Fluorothreonine in Streptomyces cattleya. Chemosphere 52 455... 

Organofluorines play an important role in medicinal chemistry, and estimates indicate that 20-30% of the pharmaceutical products on the market contain at least one fluorine atom [57, 58], However, natural organofluorine compounds are exceedingly rare, and the pharmaceutical industry has not yet benefited from a microbial source of such compounds. The soil bacterium Streptomyces cattleya was found to produce fluoro-acetate and 4-fluorothreonine, but the biological scope is limited to a single biological pathway that produces fluoroace-tate [58, 59], Identification of the fluorination enzyme FIA, responsible for C-F bond formation in S. cattleya, enabled the directed manipulation of biosynthetic pathways for the formation of fluorinated natural products. 

Murphy, C.D., Schafifrath, C., and O Hagan, D. (2003) Fluorinated natural products the biosynthesis of fluoroacetate and 4-fluorofhreonine in Streptomyces cattleya. Chemosphere, 52, 455 161. 

Natural Products Containing Fluorine and Recent Progress in Elucidating the Pathway of Fluorometabolite Biosynthesis in Streptomyces cattleya... 

Fluoroacetate. Fluoroacetate 1 is the most ubiquitous fluorine-containing natural product and has been identified in over 30 plants, principally species from Africa and Australia, and also as a secondary metabolite in the bacteria Streptomyces cattleya (see below). The compoimd was first identified by Marais (4) in South Africa as the toxic principle in plants of Dichapetalum cymosum (gifblaar). The young leaves of this plant are particularly toxic in the spring when levels of fluoroacetate of up to... 

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