Switching Antibiotics Production On and Off in Actinomycetes by an IclR Family Transcriptional Regulator from Streptomyces peucetius ATCC 27952

Doxorubicin, produced by Streptomyces peucetius ATCC 27952, is tightly regulated by dnrO, dnrN, and dnrI regulators. Genome mining of S. peucetius revealed the presence of the IclR (doxR) type family of transcription regulator mediating the signal-dependent expression of operons at the nonribosomal peptide synthetase gene cluster. Overexpression of doxR in native strain strongly repressed the drug production. Furthermore, it also had a negative effect on the regulatory system of doxorubicin, wherein the transcript of dnrI was reduced to the maximum level in comparision with the other two. Interestingly, the overexpression of the same gene also had strong inhibitory effects on the production of actinorhodin (blue pigment) and undecylprodigiosin (red pigment) in Streptomyces coelicolor M145, herboxidiene production in Streptomyces chromofuscus ATCC 49982, and spinosyn production in Saccharopolyspora spinosa NRRL 18395, respectively. Moreover, DoxR exhibited pleiotropic effects on the production of blue and red pigments in S. coelicolor when grown in different agar media, wherein the production of blue pigment was inhibited in R2YE medium and the red pigment was inhibited in YEME medium. However, the production of both blue and red pigments from S. coelicolor harboring doxR was halted in ISP2 medium, whereas S. coelicolor produced both pigmented antibiotics in the same plate. These consequences demonstrate that the on and off production of these antibiotics was not due to salt stress or media compositions, but was selectively controlled in actinomycetes.