Substrate Hunting for the Myxobacterial CYP260A1 Revealed New 1α-Hydroxylated Products from C-19 Steroids

Cytochromes P450 catalyze a variety of synthetically useful reactions. However, it is difficult to determine their physiological or artificial functions when a plethora of orphan P450 systems are present in a genome. CYP260A1 from Sorangium cellulosum So ce56 is a new member among the 21 available P450s in the strain. To identify putative substrates for CYP260A1 we used high-throughput screening of a compound library (ca. 17,000 ligands). Structural analogues of the type I hits were searched for biotechnologically relevant compounds, and this led us to select C-19 steroids as potential substrates. We identified efficient surrogate redox partners for CYP260A1, and an Escherichia coli-based whole-cell biocatalyst system was developed to convert testosterone, androstenedione, and their derivatives methyltestosterone and 11-oxoandrostenedione. A detailed (1) H and (13) C NMR characterization of the product(s) from C-19 steroids revealed that CYP260A1 is the very first 1α-steroid hydroxylase.