Establishing an efficient salinomycin biosynthetic pathway in three heterologous Streptomyces hosts by constructing a 106‐kb multioperon artificial gene cluster

Salinomycin is a promising anticancer drug for chemotherapy. A highly productive biosynthetic gene cluster will facilitate the creation of analogs with improved therapeutic activity and reduced side effects. In this study, we engineered an artificial 106-kb salinomycin gene cluster and achieved efficient heterologous expression in three hosts: Streptomyces coelicolor CH999, S. lividans K4-114, and S. albus J1074. The six-operon artificial gene cluster consists of 25 genes from the native gene cluster organized into five operons and five fatty acid β-oxidation genes into one operon. All operons are driven by strong constitutive promoters. For K4-114 and J1074 harboring the artificial gene cluster, salinomycin production in shake flask cultures was 14.3 mg L-1 and 19.3 mg L-1 , respectively. The production was 1.3-fold and 1.7-fold higher, respectively, than that of the native producer S. albus DSM41398. K4-114 and J1074 harboring the native gene cluster produced an undetectable amount of salinomycin and 0.5 mg L-1 , respectively. CH999 harboring the artificial gene cluster produced 10.3 mg L-1 of salinomycin, which was 92% of the production by DSM41398. The efficient heterologous expression system based on the 106-kb multioperon artificial gene cluster established in this study will facilitate structural diversification of salinomycin, which is valuable for drug development and structure-activity studies.