Ke Ye, Jie Shi, Huimin Wu, Shujie Wang, Zexu Lin, Jiale Sun, Yuwei Chen, Bohao Wang, Rongxuan Wang, Chenglin Jiang, Yi Jiang, Tom Hsiang, Bin Zhu, Lixin Zhang, Xueting Liu, Guoliang Zhu
Three pairs of new furo[3,2-c]pyridone derivative racemates, named (±)-phaeopyridones A-C (1-3), together with two new compounds, berkeleyamide E (4), and phaeopyranone (5), were isolated from the endophytic fungus Phaeobotryon negundinis 12020, along with three known compounds, (8S,9S)-dihydroisoflavipucine (6), (8S,9R)-dihydroisoflavipucine (7), and sapinopyridione (8), guided by bioinformatics and feature-based molecular networking and fragment-based LC-MS/MS analysis. The chemical structures of these compounds were elucidated by comprehensive spectroscopic analyses and single-crystal X-ray diffraction. Furthermore, a biosynthetic pathway for compounds 1-3 was proposed, indicating the unique furo[3,2-c]pyridone moiety may be generated by a non-enzymatic intermolecular hemiketal formation reaction. Our research expands the known range of flavipucine alkaloids and highlights the unexplored biosynthetic potential of natural products derived from endophytic fungi.