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Rare actinomycetes represent an underexploited source of new bioactive compounds. Here, we report the use of a targeted metabologenomic approach to identify piperazyl compounds in the rare actinomycete Lentzea flaviverrucosa DSM 44664. These efforts to identify molecules that incorporate piperazate building blocks resulted in the discovery and structural elucidation of two dimeric biaryl-cyclohexapeptides, petrichorins A and B. Petrichorin B is a symmetric homodimer similar to the known compound chloptosin, but petrichorin A is unique among known piperazyl cyclopeptides because it is an asymmetric heterodimer. Due to the structural complexity of petrichorin A, solving its structure required a combination of several standard chemical methods plus in silico modeling, strain mutagenesis, and solving the structure of its biosynthetic intermediate petrichorin C for confident assignment. Furthermore, we found that the piperazyl cyclopeptides comprising each half of the petrichorin A heterodimer are made via two distinct nonribosomal peptide synthetase (NRPS) assembly lines, and the responsible NRPS enzymes are encoded within a contiguous biosynthetic supercluster on the L. flaviverrucosa chromosome. Requiring promiscuous cytochrome p450 crosslinking events for asymmetric and symmetric biaryl production, petrichorins A and B exhibited potent in vitro activity against A2780 human ovarian cancer, HT1080 fibrosarcoma, PC3 human prostate cancer, and Jurkat human T lymphocyte cell lines with IC 50 values at low nM levels. Cyclic piperazyl peptides and their crosslinked derivatives are interesting drug leads, and our findings highlight the potential for heterodimeric bicyclic peptides such as petrichorin A for inclusion in future pharmaceutical design and discovery programs. 

InAs-based interband cascade (IC) lasers with improved optical confinement have achieved high-temperature operation with a threshold current density as low as 333 A/cm2 at 300 K for emission at 6003 nm. The threshold current density is the lowest ever reported among semiconductor mid-infrared lasers at similar wavelengths. These InAs-based IC devices lased in pulsed mode at temperatures up to 357 K near 6.28 μm. A narrow-ridge device was able to operate in continuous-wave mode at temperatures up to 293 K at 6.01 μm.