Transcription Analysis of Daptomyc in Biosynthetic Genesin Streptomyces roseosporus

Insights into gene expression have the potential for improvement of antibiotic yield and the development of robust production hosts for use in recombinant biomolecule production. $Cubicin^{TM}$ (daptomycin for injection) is a recently approved antibiotic active against many Gram(+) pathogens, including those resistant to methicillin, vancomycin, and fluoroquinolones. Daptomycin is produced as a secondary metabolite by Streptomyces roseosporus. A 128 kb region of DNA including the daptomycin biosynthetic gene cluster (dpt) has been cloned. and sequenced. Using a selected array of nucleic acid probes representing this region, we compared the expression levels of the dpt genes between S. roseosporus wild-type (WT) and derived S. roseosporus high-producer of daptomycin (HP). We observed that the majority of the biosynthetic genes were upregulated in HP compared with WT; a total of 12 genes, including those encoding daptomycin synthetase, showed consistently and significantly higher expression levels, at least 5-fold, in HP compared with WT. In contrast, some genes, flanking the dpt cluster, were expressed at higher levels in the WT strain. The expression of housekeeping genes such as S. roseosporus rpsL, rpsG, and 16S (positive controls) and presumptive intergenic regions in the dpt cluster (negative control) were identical in the two strains. In addition, we compared transcription during the early, mid-log, and early-stationary phases of growth in the HP strain. The same set of genes was upregulated and downregulated under all conditions examined; housekeeping genes showed no relative change in expression level over the periods of growth tested. Analyses of this type would be of value in studies of strain improvement and also for the identification of gene regulation processes that are important for secondary metabolite production.