Transcription-factor centric genome mining strategy for discovery of diverse unprecedented RiPP gene clusters

Ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptides (RiPPs) are a rapidly emerging group of natural products with diverse biological activity. Most of their biosynthetic mechanisms are well studied and the genome mining strategy based on homology has led to the unearthing of many new ribosomal natural products, including lantipeptides, lasso peptides, cyanobactins. These precursor-centric or biosynthetic protein-centric genome mining strategies have encouraged the discovery of RiPPs natural products. However, a limitation of these strategies is that the newly identified natural products are similar to the known products and novel families of RiPP pathways were overlooked by these strategies. In this work, we applied a transcription-factor centric genome mining strategy and diverse unique crosslinked RiPP gene clusters were predicted in several sequenced microorganisms. Our research could significantly expand the category of biosynthetic pathways of RiPP natural products and predict new resources for novel RiPPs.