Phenol coupling in fungal natural product biosynthesis

Fungi produce myriad biaryl natural products that exhibit various biological activities. How fungi control the regio- and stereo-selectivity in the coupling of two aryl units to make such biaryl compounds was not fully understood. By investigating the biosynthesis of two axial chiral biaryls, namely elsinochrome C and (-)-viriditoxin, the work in this thesis demonstrate that fungal multicopper oxidases are able to control the regioselectivity of the coupling reactions, while requiring accessory proteins to mediate the coupling stereo-selectivity. A heterologous expression system was constructed to facilitate the biosynthetic studies. The study opens up avenues to synthesise biaryl molecules for drug discovery.