## 1 Introduction  
_Paeinibacillus_ spp. are distinguished by a large arsenal of bioactive secondary metabolites, such as nonribosomally formed lipopeptides, lassoeptides, polykketides, lentibiotics and bacteriocines, which are of high importance both in agrobiotechnology and medicine [1, 2, 3, 4]. They are efficient producers of potent agents against both bacterial and fungal pathogens. The most abundant bioactive compounds of these organisms are lipopeptides, which cover a broad range of structurally diverse linear and cyclic species with peptide chain lengths between 6 and 13 amino acids and manifold variations in their fatty acid chains. They comprise fusaricidins and the related LiF-antibiotics (cyclic lipohexopeptides connected with a guanidinilated \(\delta\)-hydroxy fatty acid with chain lengths between 13-19 carbon atoms) [5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12], paeinilipheptems (cyclic lipoheptapeptides, \(\delta\)-amino fatty acid) [13], octapepting (cyclic lipooctapeptides, \(\delta\)-hydroxy fatty acid) [1, 14], polypeptins (cyclic lipononapeptides, \(\delta\)-hydroxy fatty acid) [1, 15], pelgipeptins (cyclic lipononapeptides, \(\delta\)-hydroxy fatty acid) [1, 16], pylomyxins (cyclic lipodecapeptides, C8,9-unsubstituted fatty acids) [1, 17], tridecapeptins (linear lipoitrolecapeptides, \(\delta\)-hydroxy fatty acids) [1, 18, 19, 20] and paeinbacterins (cyclic lipoitrolecapeptides, pentadecanoic acid) [21, 22]. A promising prospect for medical application of these agents is that some of them display strong activities against multidrug-resistant pathogens covering both Gram-negative as well as Gram-positive bacteria. Therefore, they may be a valuable resource for the development of novel antibiotics to overcome the increasing problem of antibiotic resistance. In particular, the exploitation of the bioactive agents produced by _P. polymyna_ may contribute to solve this insistent public health issue. The present study is focused on _Paenibucillus polymyna_ strains, which are efficient plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) colonizing surfaces of plant roots in the rhizosphere [23; 24; 25]. They also appear as endophytes within the plant [26; 27]. Such strains produce four classes of lipoproteins, the fusaricidins, peuilophepins, polymyrisx and tridecapins. All of them comprise numerous structural homologs. In particular, fusaricidins [10; 11; 12] show an unusual complexity of isoforms providing a large spectrum of closely related agents with graduated activities against fungal pathogens. In this work we investigated the fusaricidin and polymynxin complexes produced by _P. polymyna_ DSM 32871 in comparison to those formed by the well-characterized strain M1 as model organism. M1 is an efficient plant growth promoting rhizobacterium. Its complete genome was sequenced by [PERSON] et al. [28] revealing nine gene clusters involved in nonribosomal synthesis of bioactive peptides and polyketides. DSM 32871 is a novel strain. Its genome sequence is not yet available. Fusaricidins were discovered by [PERSON] et al. [5; 6] and thereafter investigated by other authors in detail [7; 8; 9]. They provide a large reservoir of potent antifungal biocontrol agents against a broad array of phytopathogenic fungi, such as _Fusarium_ strains [26; 29], _Rhizoctonia solani_[25], _Leptosphaeria maculans_[30], _Sclerotini carciororum_[25] and _Botrytis cinerea_[25], for examples. They are commonly used to cure plant diseases, such as fusarium wilt of cucumber [29]; gibberella ear rot of maize [26]; blackleg disease of canola [30] or bacterial leaf blight in rice [31]. Polymyxins are cationic cyclic lipodecapeptides, which also appear as a family of closely related variants [17; 32]. They are positively charged because of the free amino groups of five of their six 2,4-diaminobutyric acid (Dab) components. They are dissected into three characteristic structural elements. They are acylated at their N-terminal Dab residue either by S-6-methyl octameric acid or (S)-6-methyl heptanoic acid.