Pfizer Handbook of Microbial Metabolites 694 



A general review of actinomycin structure and syn- 

 thesis has appeared.^*'" 



A colorless, amorphous polypeptide antibiotic, edein, 

 has been isolated from a strain of Bacilhis hrevis}*^ It 

 contained arginine, glycine, glutamic acid, aspartic acid, 

 tyrosine and two unidentified ninhydrin-positive spots. 



Two heat stable polypeptides, phytoactin and phy- 

 tostreptin, have been isolated from an unclassified strep- 

 tomycete.^*'' Both contain valine, a-alanine, proline, 

 leucine or isoleucine, arginine, glycine and serine. 



Two peptide antibiotics not mentioned before are 

 coliformin^'^" and roseocitrins A and B.^^^ Coliformin has 

 the analysis: C 47.6, H 8.22, CI 3.31, S 0.23, P 0.47 and 

 O 33.15 and contains alanine, glycine, serine, glutamic 

 acid, aspartic acid, lysine, valine and leucine. The 

 roseocitrins appear to resemble streptothricin. 



In a review of this class the name depsipeptide has 

 been suggested for substances such as amidomycin and 

 valinomycin, which are composed of a-hydroxy acids and 

 amino acids. ^'^- Synthetic methods have been devised 

 for both regular and irregular sequences of the two types 

 of acids in these antibiotics. 



The biosynthesis of a,y-diaminobutyric acid in Bacillus 

 circulans has been studied. ^^^ 



The structure of amidinomycin, C9HigON4 -112804, has 

 been shown to be:^^^* 



O NH 



H2N- 



-C— NH— CHo— CHo— C— NH2-H2S04 



i*"''Hans Brockmann, Angew. Chem. 72 939-948 (1960). 



^''^ Z. Kurylo-Borowska, Symposium on Antibiotics, Prague, 1959. 



149 Jack ZifFer, S. J. Ishihara, T. J. Cairney and A. W. Chow, 

 Phijtopathology 47 539 (1957). 



1^" Stig K. L. Freyschuss, Stig O. Pehrson and Borje Steinberg, 

 Antibiotics and Chemotherapy 5 218 (1955). 



I'l Hisaya Kato, J. Antibiotics (Japan) 6A 143 (1953). 



152 M. M. Shemyakin, Angeiu. Chem. 72 342-345 (1960). 



1''^ Yelahanka Krishnamurthy Murthy, Dissertation, Purdue Univ., 

 1958. 



'^^'■^^ Shoshiro Nakamura, Keiko Karasawa, Nobuo Tanaka, Hiroshi 

 Yonehara and Hamao Umezawa, /. Antibiotics (Japan) 13A 362 

 (1960). 



