Genome Mining for novel lasso peptides from Actinobacteria isolated from diverse Australian environments

Actinobacteria is a treasure trove of bioactive secondary metabolites including antimicrobials and anticancer compounds. Lasso peptides are small, 14 – 30 amino-acid-residue peptides that exhibit various bioactivities. In this study, the genomes of 164 Actinobacteria strains that were obtained throughout Australia were sequenced using the Illumina platform. Various bioinformatics tools were used to search the Actinobacteria genomes for potential lasso peptide biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs), of which 53 were obtained and presented herein (41 new variants of known and 12 novel ones). Novel lariatin gene clusters were cloned into suitable heterologous hosts and screened for the production of the predicted compounds.