Co-Occurrence of Enzyme Domains Guides the Discovery of an Oxazolone Synthetase

Multidomain enzymes are cellular machines that orchestrate two or more catalytic activities to carry out metabolic transformations with increased control and speed. Our understanding of these enzymes’ capabilities drives progress in fundamental metabolic research, biocatalysis, and human health. Here, we report the development of a new genome mining approach for the targeted discovery of novel biochemical transformations through the analysis of co-occurring enzyme domains (CO-ED) in a single protein. CO-ED was designed to identify unannotated multifunctional enzymes for functional characterization and discovery based on the premise that linked enzyme domains have evolved to function collaboratively. Guided by CO-ED, we targeted an unannotated predicted ThiF-nitroreductase di-domain enzyme found in more than 50 proteobacteria. Through heterologous expression and biochemical reconstitution, we discovered a series of new natural products containing the rare oxazolone (azlactone) heterocycle and characterized the di-domain enzyme as the first reported oxazolone synthetase in biology. This enzyme has the potential to become a valuable biocatalyst for the production of versatile oxazolone synthetic intermediates. This proof-of-principle experiment validates CO-ED-guided genome mining as a new method with potential broad utility for both the discovery of novel enzymatic transformations and the functional gene annotation of multidomain enzymes. TOC graphic