Lanthipeptides are intriguing peptides known since 1928, the year of penicillin’s discovery. At that time, they were known as lantibiotics due to their (methyl)lanthionine amino acids and antibacterial activity. Their body of knowledge expanded tremendously over the last few years. Our analysis reveals that Bacteroidetes has a high state of clusters encoding the biosynthesis of class I lanthipeptides. We show that some strains of Pedobacter have a number of LanBs/genome comparable to that of some Actinobacteria. The case study selected was Pedobacter lusitanus NL19. Its clusters identified encode LanBs associated with LanCs as well as orphan LanBs. The first are concomitant with LanT transporters typical of class II lanthipeptides (and not class I), making their clusters into a hybrid class I and class II type. So far, this kind of operon was described only once and is involved in the production of pinensins, the first lanthipeptide with antifungal activity. A particular feature of pinensins is their splitted LanBs and we found that these enzymes are also widely encoded in Bacteroides. The function of a high percentage of proteins predicted to play a role in the production of Pedobacter lanthipeptides is unknown. Other major fraction of these proteins is expected to be enrolled in signal-transduction pathways.

We demonstrate that the occurrence of lanthipeptides clusters in the genomes of Gram-negative bacteria is higher than previously reported. More importantly, we show that their genetic background is highly diverse, which is an undeniable foreshadowing of novel peptide structures, biochemistry and biological function.

Lanthipeptides 是一种有趣的肽，自 1928 年即青霉素的发现年以来就为人所知。当时，由于其（甲基）羊毛硫氨酸氨基酸和抗菌活性，它们被称为羊毛硫抗生素。在过去的几年里，他们的知识体系得到了极大的扩展。我们的分析表明，拟杆菌具有高度的簇状态，编码 I 类羊毛硫肽的生物合成。我们表明，某些Pedobacter菌株具有与某些放线菌相当的 LanB/基因组数量。选择的案例研究是Pedobacter lusitanusNL19。它的集群识别编码与 LanC 相关的 LanB 以及孤儿 LanB。第一种伴随着典型的 II 类羊毛硫肽（而非 I 类）的 LanT 转运蛋白，使它们的簇成为 I 类和 II 类混合类型。到目前为止，这种操纵子只被描述过一次，并且参与了松果苷的产生，这是第一个具有抗真菌活性的羊毛硫肽。pinensins 的一个特殊特征是它们分裂的 LanB，我们发现这些酶也在拟杆菌中广泛编码。预测在Pedobacter lanthipeptides的生产中发挥作用的大部分蛋白质的功能尚不清楚。预计这些蛋白质的其他主要部分将参与信号转导途径。

我们证明了革兰氏阴性菌基因组中羊毛硫肽簇的出现率高于先前报道的。更重要的是，我们证明了它们的遗传背景高度多样化，这是新肽结构、生物化学和生物学功能不可否认的伏笔。