Abstract
The origin of each carbon of anhydrosepedonin produced by Sepedonium chrysospermum has been elucidated by carbon-14 tracer method. At first, the degradation pathways adequate to such object was studied. The radioactivity incorporated in sepedonin and anhydrosepedonin was considerably high when acetate-1-14C, acetate-2-14C and formate-14C were used as the precursor. The feature of the labeling pattern of anhydrosepedonin was analogous to those of the other fungal tropolones. The carbon atom derived from formate was almost exclusively situated at C-7 position of the tropolone ring. As a whole, the labeling pattern demonstrated that anhydrosepedonin might be synthesized through the poly-ketomethylene pathway.
