Natural products containing carbon-phosphorus bonds (phosphonic and phosphinic acids) have found widespread use in medicine and agriculture. They include the clinically used antibiotic fosfomycin, the common herbicide phosphinothricin (BASTA or Liberty), and the antimalarial candidate fosmidomycin. Recent years have seen a renewed interest in the biosynthesis of these compounds with the cloning of the biosynthetic gene clusters for several family members and the use of genome mining for novel phosphonates. Investigations of their biosynthetic pathways have uncovered much unprecedented chemistry. These include transformations carried out by non-heme iron dependent enzymes, tRNA dependent enzymes, and enzymes involved in methane production in the oceans. This presentation will focus on two of these enzymes that use the same substrate but achieve radically different reaction outcomes.

Two radical proteins: Hydroxyethylphosphonate dioxygenase and methylphosphonate synthase

254th National Meeting (2017)

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