Mono- and diterpenoids are of great industrial and medical value as specialty chemicals and pharmaceuticals. Production of these compounds in microbial hosts, such as Escherichia coli, can be limited by intracellular levels of the polyprenyl diphosphate precursors, geranyl diphosphate (GPP), and geranylgeranyl diphosphate (GGPP). To alleviate this limitation, we constructed synthetic operons th...

Farnesyl diphosphate (FPP) and all fifteen positional isomers of ((13)C1)FPP were enzymatically converted by the bacterial terpene cyclases corvol ether synthase from Kitasatospora setae, the epi-cubebol synthase from Streptosporangium roseum, and the isodauc-8-en-11-ol synthase from Streptomyces venezuelae. The enzyme products were analysed by GC-MS and GC-QTOF MS(2) and the obtained data were...

Isoprenoids play important roles in all living organisms as components of structural cholesterol, steroid hormones in mammals, carotenoids in plants, and ubiquinones. Significant differences occur in the length of the isoprenic side chains of ubiquinone between different organisms, suggesting that different enzymes are involved in the synthesis of these side chains. Whereas in Plasmodium falcip...

Natural sesquiterpene synthases have evolved to make complex terpenoids by quenching reactive carbocations either proton transfer or hydroxylation (water capture), depending on their active site. Germacradien-11-ol synthase (Gd11olS) from Streptomyces coelicolor catalyzes the cyclization of farnesyl diphosphate (FDP) into hydroxylated germacradien-11-ol. Here, we combine experiment and simulati...

Terpenoids are the largest class of plant secondary metabolites and have attracted widespread interest. Salvia miltiorrhiza, belonging to the largest and most widely distributed genus in the mint family, is a model medicinal plant with great economic and medicinal value. Diterpenoid tanshinones are the major lipophilic bioactive components in S. miltiorrhiza. Systematic analysis of genes involv...

An analysis of the x-ray structure of homodimeric avian farnesyl diphosphate synthase (geranyltransferase, EC 2.5.1.10) coupled with information about conserved amino acids obtained from a sequence alignment of 35 isoprenyl diphosphate synthases that synthesize farnesyl (C15), geranylgeranyl (C20), and higher chain length isoprenoid diphosphates suggested that the side chains of residues corres...