Genetic analysis of polyketide synthase and peptide synthase genes of ‎cyanobacteria as a mining tool for new pharmaceutical compounds

Cyanobacteria are considered a promising source for new ýpharmaceutical lead compounds and a large number of chemically diverse and ýbioactive metabolites have been obtained from cyanobacteria. Despite of ýseveral worldwide studies on prevalence of NRPSs and PKSs among the ýcyanobacteria, none of them included Iranian cyanobacteria of Kermanshah ýprovince. Therefore, the aim of this study was to amplify the NRPS and PKS ýgenes. These stains were the most frequent species of that zone. The DNA ýsequences of the 16s rRNA region were determined and the strains were named ýas Scytonema sp. N11, Calothrix sp. N42 and terrestrial Nostoc SP. N66). ýLastly, to show that the presence of these genes correlates with natural product ýsynthesis, we conducted biochemical assays to detect the presence of ýantimicrobial effects in organic extracts. The results of these experiments ýsuggest that both NRPS and PKS genes are presence in all three strains. ýFinally the sequences presented in this study have been deposited in GenBank ýfor getting the accession numbers (NRPS A domains) and (PKS KS domains). ýAccording to these results, it is concluded that the antibiogram bioassay and ýmolecular detection of peptide synthetase and polyketide synthase genes in ýcyanobacterial strains may be useful techniques for the assessment of natural ýproduct -producing species and possible role of peptide synthetase and ýpolyketide synthase enzyme complexes in the biosynthesis of biologically ýactive compounds.ý