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There is a continuous need for novel microbial natural products to fill the drying-up drug development pipeline. Herein, we report myxadazoles from Myxococcus sp. SDU36, a family of novel chimeric small molecules that consist of N-ribityl 5,6-dimethylbenzimidazole and a linear fatty acid chain endowed with an isoxazole ring. The experiments of genome sequencing, gene insertion mutation, isotope labelling, and precursor feeding demonstrated that the fatty acid chain was encoded by a non-canonical PKS/NRPS gene cluster, whereas the origin of N-ribityl 5,6-dimethylbenzimidazole was related to the vitamin B12 metabolism. The convergence of these two distinct biosynthetic pathways through a C-N coupling led to the unique chemical framework of myxadazoles, which is an unprecedented hybridization mode in the paradigm of natural products. Myxadazoles exhibited potent vasculogenesis promotion effect and moderate antithrombotic activity, underscoring their potential usage for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases.

This study aimed to prepare silk fibroin (SF) films loaded with honeysuckle flowers extract (HFE) for inducing apoptosis of HeLa cells. We mixed solution of SF and HFE by air‐drying for preparing the honeysuckle flowers extract loaded silk fibroin (SFH) films. The physical properties including morphologies, contact angle, roughness, and Z range were characterized. MTS assay and fluorescence micrographs proved that SFH films inhibited the proliferation rate of HeLa cells due to induction of HFE into SF films. Furthermore, cell apoptosis assay and cell cycle analysis confirmed that the apoptosis of HeLa cells resulted from SFH films. Therefore, SFH films designed in our study might be a promising candidate material for cancer therapy.

Recently, tandem repeat typing has emerged as a rapid and easy method for the molecular epidemiology of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis) complex. In this study, a collection of 19 VNTRs incorporating 15 previously described loci and 4 newly evaluated markers were used to genotype 206 Chinese M. tuberculosis isolates and 9 BCG strains. The discriminatory power was evaluated and compared with that obtained by Spoligotyping. It turned out that 15-locus VNTR could be very useful in M. tuberculosis complex strains genotyping in China. The 4 newly evaluated loci were proved informative and could be useful for future epidemiology studies, especially in Beijing family strains. In addition, a unique pattern of the latter 4 loci were found in Chinese BCG strains.

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(L)-H-Pro-(L)-Phe-OH (4) were found to be efficient catalysts for direct asymmetric aldol reactions between acetone and various aldehydes. The reaction conditions use a DMSO-NMM-PEMG 5000 system at 0 °C in high yields (62-96%) and enantioselectivities (up to >99% ee).