Department of Pharmacognosy, University of Vienna, Althanstrasse 14, A-1090 Vienna, Austria.
Biopolymers. 2010;94(5):565-72. doi: 10.1002/bip.21414.
Circular peptides and proteins of great number and diversity have been discovered in bacteria, plants, and animals. Cyclotides--disulfide-knotted and head-to-tail cyclized plant peptides that exhibit various bioactivities--are by far the largest group of circular proteins. Since their first discovery over three decades ago, there has been a lot of progress in the elucidation of structural characteristics and applications of cyclotides as novel peptide drug grafting frameworks, but there is a lack of information about their native occurrence in various plant families. The "global cyclotide adventure" was initiated as a plant collection and analysis project to advance our understanding of the origin and distribution of cyclotides in flowering plants. Here, I will provide a chronological overview of the preparation of this project, including background information on plant taxonomy and morphology, summarize, and comment on the recent progress about the discovery of cyclotide-producing plants and will give an outlook on the future of cyclotide analysis and further discoveries to be made.
在细菌、植物和动物中发现了大量具有多样性的环状肽和蛋白质。环肽——具有二硫键和头尾环化的植物肽，具有多种生物活性——是迄今为止最大的环状蛋白群。自三十多年前首次发现以来，人们在阐明环肽的结构特征及其作为新型肽类药物嫁接框架的应用方面取得了很大进展，但关于它们在各种植物科中的天然存在的信息却很少。“全球环肽探险”作为一个植物收集和分析项目启动，旨在增进我们对环肽在开花植物中的起源和分布的理解。在这里，我将按时间顺序概述该项目的筹备情况，包括植物分类学和形态学的背景信息，总结并评论最近关于环肽产生植物的发现的最新进展，并展望环肽分析和进一步发现的未来。
