Streptothricins are atypical aminoglycoside antibiotics possessing antibacterial and antifungal activities. Zhongshengmycin, a product of streptothricins, is widely used as agriculture antibiotic for crop protection. A defect of this product is that it contains various streptothricin components which make product quality control very difficult. The group of CHEN Yihua has elucidated the biosynthetic pathway of the D-gulosamine moiety and found two novel enzymatic catalysts were involved in this process.

Zhengyan GUO et al., Angew. Chemie Int. Ed. DOI: 10.1002/anie.201412190