Biosynthesis of Guanitoxin Enables Global Environmental Detection in Freshwater Cyanobacteria.

Harmful cyanobacterial blooms (cyanoHABs) cause recurrent toxic events in global watersheds. Although public health agencies monitor the causal toxins of most cyanoHABs and scientists in the field continue developing precise detection and prediction tools, the potent anticholinesterase neurotoxin, guanitoxin, is not presently environmentally monitored. This is largely due to its incompatibility with widely employed analytical methods and instability in the environment, despite guanitoxin being among the most lethal cyanotoxins. Here, we describe the guanitoxin biosynthesis gene cluster and its rigorously characterized nine-step metabolic pathway from l-arginine in the cyanobacterium Sphaerospermopsis torques-reginae ITEP-024. Through environmental sequencing data sets, guanitoxin (gnt) biosynthetic genes are repeatedly detected and expressed in municipal freshwater bodies that have undergone past toxic events. Knowledge of the genetic basis of guanitoxin biosynthesis now allows for environmental, biosynthetic gene monitoring to establish the global scope of this neurotoxic organophosphate.

• Publication year

  2022

• Venue

  Journal of the American Chemical Society

• Publication date

  2022-05-18

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Chemistry, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1021/jacs.2c01424PMID 35583956PMCID PMC9247102
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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