March 26, 2014 - 10:26am
Recent work by the group of Prof. Xinyu Liu, (including postdoctoral fellows Matthew Hillwig and Qin Zhu, graduate students Daniel Kwak and Kuljira Ittiamornkul, and undergraduate students Heather Fuhrman and Tyler Sevco) have identified and characterized for the first time, the biosynthetic gene clusters for ambiguines (amb) and welwitindolinones (wel). Comparative analysis of the wel and amb pathways refined the molecular natures of early intermediates in welwitindolinone and ambiguine biosynthesis, and led to the discovery of a panel of non-heme iron-dependent oxygenases as the key catalysts for late stage oxidative structural diversifications of hapalindole-type alkaloids. Their findings provide the genetic and molecular basis for future studies of novel enzymes associated with hapalindole-type natural product biosynthesis and the rational engineering of these pathways for the production of therapeutically important alkaloids in vivo.
See inside cover story in ChemBioChem, 2014, issue 5 (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cbic.201490013/abstract news highlight at ChemistryViews Magazine (http://www.chemistryviews.org/details/ezine/5891101/.html))and