[1][2] Psymberin was found to be highly bioactive as it showed LC50s at nanomolar concentrations against various types of tumors.

[1][2] The biosynthesis of psymberin became of interest when it was found to have a very similar structure to pederin, a natural product derived from the beetle genus Paederus.

[3] This led researchers to investigate the genes of the organism that code for the respective natural product.

The figure below shows the proposed biosynthesis of psymberin based on analysis of the gene clusters.

The following abbreviations correspond to the figure below: GNAT, GCN5-related N-acetyltransferase; CR, crotonase; KR, ketoreductase; KS0, non-elongating ketoreductase; OMT, O-methyltranfserase; C, nonribosomal peptide synthetase (NRPS) condensation domain; A, NRPS adenylation domain; MT, Methyltransferase; DH, deydratase; TE, Thioesterase; ?, unknown.