Cystodienoic acid : a new diterpene isolated from the myxobacterium Cystobacter sp.

Myxobacteria are Gram-negative bacteria that are sources of a large number of compounds with unique structures that possess varying biological activities. They are known to produce secondary metabolites that have more novel structures with those produced by other microbes such as, actinomycetes and fungi. In our search for novel secondary metabolites, Cystobacter ferrugineus strain Cbfe23, which was isolated from a soil sample in China, garnered our attention based on our in-house LC–MS analysis. Specifically, a peak identified with an m/z of 352 did not produce any hits in our mass spectral library of compounds, prompting us to further investigate the strain in detail in order to determine the structural profile of the unknown metabolite.