TY - JOUR T1 - MtrA is an essential regulator that coordinates antibiotic production and sporulation in <em>Streptomyces</em> species JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/090399 SP - 090399 AU - Nicolle F. Som AU - Daniel Heine AU - John T. Munnoch AU - Neil A. Holmes AU - Felicity Knowles AU - Govind Chandra AU - Ryan F. Seipke AU - Paul A. Hoskisson AU - Barrie Wilkinson AU - Matthew I. Hutchings Y1 - 2016/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/12/12/090399.abstract N2 - Streptomyces bacteria make numerous secondary metabolites, including half of all known antibiotics. Understanding the global regulation of secondary metabolism is important because most Streptomyces natural products are not made under laboratory conditions and unlocking ‘cryptic’ biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) is a major focus for natural product discovery. Production is coordinated with sporulation but the regulators that coordinate development with antibiotic biosynthesis are largely unknown. Here we characterise a highly conserved actinobacterial response regulator called MtrA in antibiotic-producing Streptomyces species. We show that MtrA is an essential global regulator of secondary metabolism that directly activates antibiotic production in in S. coelicolor and S. venezuelae. MtrA also controls key developmental genes required for DNA replication and cell division and we propose that MtrA is the missing link that coordinates secondary metabolism with development in Streptomyces species. ER -