CLONING, SEQUENCING AND PRODUCTION OF THE LANTIBIOTIC MERSACIDIN

Mersacidin is a lanthionine-containing peptide antibiotic that shows a good in vivo efficiency against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. It is excreted during early stationary phase and could be puri fied from culture supernatant in a one-step procedure by reversed phas e HPLC. Its structural gene was cloned from chromosomal DNA of the pro ducer strain Bacillus subtilis HIL Y-85,54728. Sequencing revealed tha t pre-mersacidin consists of an unusually long 48 amino acid leader se quence and a 20 amino acid propeptide part which is modified during bi osynthesis to the mature lantibiotic. The comparison of the mersacidin prepeptide with those of hitherto known lantibiotics demonstrates tha t mersacidin is more closely related to type B lantibiotic cinnamycin than to type A antibiotics.