Biosynthetic studies on actinomycete metabolites for development of novel diabetes drugs

Trestatin and amylostatin are aminocyclitols, which have alpha-glycosidase inhibitory activities. In order to develop new diabetes drugs, biosynthetic studies on trestatin and amylostatin, were carried out. Draft sequence analysis of trestatin and amylostatin producing strains indicated gene clusters involved in biosynthesis of these compounds. Furthermore, biosynthetic pathways of these compounds were predicted on the basis of the amino acid sequence data. In addition, we prepared genetic-disruption mutants of several functional proteins for creating new analogs of these antibiotics.