**1. Introduction**

Pesticides play an important role in modern agriculture. Among all chemicals being produced, pesticides are in second place after fertilizers in their extent of use. A total of 2.4 billion kilograms of pesticides were applied worldwide in 2007 [1]. Nevertheless, lack of weed control is still the most topical issue. Among all pests, weeds have the largest negative effect on crop productivity [2,3]. In light of the rapidly increasing evolution of herbicide resistance, the need for new herbicides with new modes of action (MOAs) and safer ecological profiles is growing [4,5].

From all new pesticide active ingredients registered by the Environmental Protection Agency from 1997 to 2010, almost 70% have origins in natural products. Interestingly, only 8% of conventional herbicides are natural product-derived [3,6]. The wide structural diversity of natural products and their small amount of overlap with synthetic compounds imply their potential as lead structures for the development of new pesticides [7–9]. This is further confirmed by the phytotoxin literature, which suggests that natural products have many more MOAs than the commercial herbicides currently possess [3].

A novel bleaching herbicide, albucidin, from the strain *Streptomyces albus* subsp. *chlorinus* NRRL B-24108 was discovered in 2009 [10]. In this paper, we present the identification, heterologous expression, and engineering of the albucidin gene cluster. We also propose the biosynthetic route that leads to the production of albucidin. The identified minimal set of biosynthetic genes allows for the straightforward construction of overproducing strains for a high yield albucidin supply for biological activity studies.
