Fan P, Moghe G D, Last R L
Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States.
Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States.
Methods Enzymol. 2016;576:1-17. doi: 10.1016/bs.mie.2016.02.023. Epub 2016 Mar 16.
There are estimated to be >300,000 plant species, producing >200,000 metabolites. Many of these metabolites are restricted to specific plant lineages and are referred to as "specialized" metabolites. These serve varied functions in plants including defense against biotic and abiotic stresses, plant-plant and plant-microbe communication, and pollinator attraction. These compounds also have important applications in agriculture, medicine, skin care, and in diverse aspects of human culture. The specialized metabolic repertoire of plants can vary even within and between closely related species, in terms of the number and classes of specialized metabolites as well as their structural variants. This phenotypic variation can be exploited to discover the underlying variation in the metabolic enzymes. We describe approaches for using the diversity of specialized metabolites and variation in enzyme structure and function to identify novel enzymatic activities and understand the structural basis for these differences. The knowledge obtained from these studies will provide new modules for the synthetic biology toolbox.
据估计，植物物种超过30万种，产生的代谢物超过20万种。其中许多代谢物仅限于特定的植物谱系，被称为“特殊”代谢物。这些代谢物在植物中发挥着多种功能，包括抵御生物和非生物胁迫、植物与植物以及植物与微生物之间的通讯，以及吸引传粉者。这些化合物在农业、医学、皮肤护理以及人类文化的各个方面也有重要应用。植物的特殊代谢产物库即使在亲缘关系密切的物种内部和之间，在特殊代谢物的数量和类别以及它们的结构变体方面也可能有所不同。这种表型变异可用于发现代谢酶的潜在变异。我们描述了利用特殊代谢物的多样性以及酶结构和功能的变异来识别新的酶活性并了解这些差异的结构基础的方法。从这些研究中获得的知识将为合成生物学工具箱提供新的模块。
