UC Santa Barbara

Single-module nonribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPSs) and NRPS-like enzymes activate and transform carboxylic acids in both primary and secondary metabolism and are of great interest due to their biocatalytic potentials. The single-module NRPS IvoA is essential for fungal pigment biosynthesis. Here, we show that IvoA catalyzes ATP-dependent unidirectional stereoinversion of l-tryptophan to d-tryptophan with complete conversion. While the stereoinversion is catalyzed by the epimerization (E) domain, the terminal condensation (C) domain stereoselectively hydrolyzes d-tryptophanyl-S-phosphopantetheine thioester and thus represents a noncanonical C domain function. Using IvoA, we demonstrate a biocatalytic stereoinversion/deracemization route to access a variety of substituted d-tryptophan analogs in high enantiomeric excess.