New antibiotics of meroterpenoid nature

Together with colleagues from Saarland University, we identified two new meroterpenoid antibiotics furachinocin K and L, isolated from a strain of Streptomyces sp. Je 1-369 (Lv 391). The chemical structures of these compounds determined by NMR significantly differed from the previously described furachinocins due to modifications of the polyketide-naphthoquinone nucleus.

The structure of furakhinocin L contains an acetylhydrazone fragment, which is quite rare for natural compounds. In addition, furahinocin L is the first representative of furahinocins that exhibits antibacterial activity. The materials of this work are published in the journal Antibiotics.