Gladiolin is a polyketide natural product produced by Burkholderia gladioli BCC0238 which is isolated from sputum of cystic fibrosis patients.

[1] The good activity and high stability of gladiolin offers it the potential for further development as an antibiotic against antibiotic-resistant M. tuberculosis.

[citation needed] Burkholderia is a prolific producer of many antimicrobial compounds, for example, thailanstatin,[4] spliceostatin,[5] phytotoxin, rhizoxin,[6] and others.

The gladiolin PKS contains 20 KS domains, 17 of which are predicted to catalyze chain elongation, the rest of them act as transacylases.

The initiation step was proposed to be transacylation of the succinyl moiety of succinyl-CoA onto the active site Cys residue in the N-terminal ketosynthase domain of GbnD1 and was supported by phylogenetic analyses.