The
biosynthesis of fungal bicyclo[2.2.2]diazaoctane indole alkaloids with a wide spectrum of biological activities have attracted increasing interest. Their intriguing mode of
assembly has long been proposed to feature a non-ribosomal
peptide synthetase, a presumed intramolecular Diels-Alderase, a variant number of prenyltransferases, and a series of oxidases responsible for the diverse tailoring modifications of their cyclodipeptide-based structural core. Until recently, the details of these biosynthetic pathways have remained largely unknown due to lack of information on the fungal derived biosynthetic
gene clusters. Herein, we report a comparative analysis of four
natural product metabolic systems of a select group of bicyclo[2.2.2]diazaoctane indole alkaloids including (+) / (−)-notoamide, paraherquamide and malbrancheamide, in which we propose an
enzyme for each step in the biosynthetic pathway based on deep
annotation and on-going biochemical studies.