Research on Validamycin Synthesis Mechanism

The Microbial Metabolism Key Lab of the Ministry of Education has conducted close cooperation with 2 universities of the United States and successfully cloned bio-synthesis clusters for antibiotic pesticides with important agricultural application and economic value. Eight genes needed in the validamycin synthesis are identified from 27 genes, the engineering assembling and expression of validamycin and precursor effective amine oxide are made in hetero hosts and the new model for validamycin bio-synthesis mechanism is developed.    Validamycin is one of the best bio-pesticides in China for the control of banded sclerotial blight in rice. As an antibiotic with strong systematic effect, it has high effect, no toxicity, environmental friendliness and no generation of resistance in fungi. It can greatly reduce the economic loss in agriculture. Besides, it can also be used as direct material in the production of acarbose and basen for diabetes. These two drugs are also exported to overseas markets in great quantities.