Exploring the biocombinatorial potential of benzoxazoles: generation of novel caboxamycin derivatives.

In addition to the benzoxazoles naturally biosynthesized by the caboxamycin and nataxazole producers, a greater structural diversity can be generated by mutasynthesis and heterologous expression of benzoxazole biosynthesis genes, not only in the respective producer strains but also in non-benzoxazole producers such as S. albus strains. These results show that the production of a wide variety of benzoxazoles could be potentially achieved by the sole expression of cbxBCDE genes (or orthologs thereof), supplying an external source of salicylate-like compounds, or with the concomitant expression of other genes capable of synthesizing salicylates, such as cbxA or natPK.