The Challis group and collaborators at the John Innes Centre report in the journal Chemical Science on the genomics-driven discovery of a novel polyketide alkaloid with an unprecedented structure. Incorporation experiments with stable isotope-labelled precursors combined with bioinformatics analyses were used to deduce the likely biosynthetic pathway for the natural product. See http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2012/sc/c2sc20410j for further details.