Effective Production of Aromatic Polyketides in Streptomyces using a Combined-Culture Method

Combinedculture is a fermentation method which efficiently induces secondary metabolite production in Streptomyces by co-culturing them with mycolic acid-containing bacteria. As a result of combined-culture screening -of our terrestrial Streptomyces collection using UV-HPLC, one of the tested strains, Streptoinyces. sp. TAKO-2, produced two known aromatic polyketides, julichrome Q6 (1) and julichrome Q₈.₈ (2), when co-cultured with the mycolic acid- containing bacterium Tsukamurella pulmonis TP-B0596. The structures of 1 and 2 were confirmed by spectroscopic analysis and literature data.