- Sato, Michio;
- Yagishita, Fumitoshi;
- Mino, Takashi;
- Uchiyama, Nahoko;
- Patel, Ashay;
- Chooi, Yit‐Heng;
- Goda, Yukihiro;
- Xu, Wei;
- Noguchi, Hiroshi;
- Yamamoto, Tsuyoshi;
- Hotta, Kinya;
- Houk, Kendall N;
- Tang, Yi;
- Watanabe, Kenji
Understanding enzymatic Diels-Alder (DA) reactions that can form complex natural product scaffolds is of considerable interest. Sch 210972 1, a potential anti-HIV fungal natural product, contains a decalin core that is proposed to form through a DA reaction. We identified the gene cluster responsible for the biosynthesis of 1 and heterologously reconstituted the biosynthetic pathway in Aspergillus nidulans to characterize the enzymes involved. Most notably, deletion of cghA resulted in a loss of stereoselective decalin core formation, yielding both an endo (1) and a diastereomeric exo adduct of the proposed DA reaction. Complementation with cghA restored the sole formation of 1. Density functional theory computation of the proposed DA reaction provided a plausible explanation of the observed pattern of product formation. Based on our study, we propose that lipocalin-like CghA is responsible for the stereoselective intramolecular [4+2] cycloaddition that forms the decalin core of 1.