Novofumigatonin biosynthesis involves a non-heme iron-dependent endoperoxide isomerase for orthoester formation

Novofumigatonin (1), isolated from the fungus Aspergillus novofumigatus, is a heavily oxygenated meroterpenoid containing a unique orthoester moiety. Despite the wide distribution of orthoesters in nature and their biological importance, little is known about the biogenesis of orthoesters. Here we show the elucidation of the biosynthetic pathway of 1 and the identification of key enzymes for the orthoester formation by a series of CRISPR-Cas9-based gene-deletion experiments and in vivo and in vitro reconstitutions of the biosynthesis. The novofumigatonin pathway involves endoperoxy compounds as key precursors for the orthoester synthesis, in which the Fe(II)/α-ketoglutarate-dependent enzyme NvfI performs the endoperoxidation. NvfE, the enzyme catalyzing the orthoester synthesis, is an Fe(II)-dependent, but cosubstrate-free, endoperoxide isomerase, despite the fact that NvfE shares sequence homology with the known Fe(II)/α-ketoglutarate-dependent dioxygenases. NvfE thus belongs to a class of enzymes that gained an isomerase activity by losing the α-ketoglutarate-binding ability.