S-adenosyl-L-methionine analogues to enhance the production of actinorhodin

It is known that overexpression of S-adenosyl-L-methionine (SAM) synthetase or exogenous addition of SAM enhances the production of actinorhodin, one of pigmented antibiotics found from Streptomyces coelicolor. In order to discover a novel compound as a signal molecule to produce actinorhodin instead of SAM, several compounds were synthesized based on the relationships between structures of the SAM analogues and their actinorhodin productivities. Of these, a few compounds showed better productivities of actinorhodin than SAM.