Fig. 2: Identifying bottlenecks in the bikaverin pathway.

a GFP-mapping strategy to identify bottlenecks. Each bikaverin pathway gene (in gray) was tagged with GFPtag (in green) separately to check their expression and Bik1 was identified as the bottleneck in the pathway. b The results of fluorescence checking in GFP-mapping strategy. Scale bar = 20 µm. c Fluorescence of Bik1-GFP using different promoters. Scale bar = 50 µm. d Western blots to check expression of C-terminally His-tagged Bik1 using different promoters. GAPDH was used as the internal reference protein. The original uncropped source image is provided in Supplementary Fig. 12. e Quantitative relative expression level of Bik1 using these promoters. Relative expression level was the intensity of Bik1 band divided by the intensity of internal reference GAPDH band. Data are presented here as mean values ± standard deviation (SD) calculated from n = 3 biological replicates. f The production of bikaverin in strain yZM009 was confirmed by HPLC analysis. Experiments in b–d were repeated three times independently with similar results. Source data underlying Fig. 2e are provided as a Source Data file.