2-Deoxystreptamine-containing aminoglycoside antibiotics: recent advances in the characterization and manipulation of their biosynthetic pathways.

The 2-deoxystreptamine-containing aminoglycosides, such as neomycin, kanamycin and gentamicin, are an important class of antibiotics. A detailed understanding of the complete biosynthetic pathway of aminoglycosides and their biosynthetic enzymes will allow us to not only generate more robust antibiotic agents or drugs with other altered biological activities, but also to produce clinically important semi-synthetic antibiotics by direct fermentation. This Highlight focuses on recent advances in the characterization of their biosynthetic enzymes and pathway as well as some chemo-enzymatic and metabolic engineering approaches for the biological production of natural, semi-synthetic, and novel aminoglycosides.