Living organisms are constantly threatened by other organisms,leading to a never-ending chemical arms race as both attacker and prey evolve.Microbes and plants have developed a gigantic arsenal of specialized metabolites to deter their attackers.Humans in tu exploit this molecular diversity to defeat diseases or increase crop yield.These applications typically depend on sustainable and high metabolite production levels,which frequently cannot be guaranteed by the natural source.Synthetic biology programs may resolve this shortage,but to enable those,the biogenesis of the natural product needs to be understood.