LoaP is a class of proteins that has the potential to induce bacterial species into creating natural products such as antibiotics. LoaP can be placed as an insert into bacterial genomes, where it can potentially drive gene expressions and subsequently activate secondary biosynthetic pathways. Here, a construct was cloned by placing LoaP as an insert into the plasmid of Clostridium beijerinckii. However, this LoaP overexpression strain failed to produce a compound that its wild-type creates. LoaP appeared to decrease production rather than increase production of certain metabolites, as the wild-type strain gave rise to more natural products than the transformant LoaP strain.

Anaerobic bacteria are a promising new source for natural product discovery. Examination of extracts from the obligate anaerobe Clostridium roseum led to the discovery of a new family of natural products, the clostyrylpyrones. The polyketide synthase-based biosynthetic mechanism of clostyrylpyrones is further proposed on the basis of bioinformatic, gene knockout, biochemical analysis, and heterologous expression studies.