<i>C</i>-Methylation controls the biosynthetic programming of alternapyrone

Abstract

Alternapyrone is a highly methylated polyene α-pyrone biosynthesised by a highly reducing polyketide synthase. Mutations of the catalytic dyad residues, H1578A/Q and E1604A, of the <i>C</i>-methyltransferase domain resulted in either significantly reduced or no production of alternapyrone, indicating the importance of <i>C</i>-methylation for alternapyrone biosynthesis.