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Nature Biotechnology 23, 1171–1176 (1 September 2005) | doi:10.1038/nbt1128

Combinatorial polyketide biosynthesis by de novo design and rearrangement of modular polyketide synthase genes

Hugo G Menzella , Ralph Reid , John R Carney , Sunil S Chandran , Sarah J Reisinger , Kedar G Patel , David A Hopwood & Daniel V Santi

Type I polyketide synthase (PKS) genes consist of modules |[sim]|3–6 kb long, which encode the structures of 2-carbon units in polyketide products. Alteration or replacement of individual PKS modules can lead to the biosynthesis of 'unnatural' natural products but existing techniques for this are time consuming.