Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena are investigating the previously largely unknown biosynthetic pathway that leads to the formation of cardenolides in plants. In a study published in the journal Nature Plants, they present two enzymes from the CYP87A family as key enzymes that catalyze the formation of pregnenolone, the precursor for the biosynthesis of plant steroids, in two different plant families. The discovery of such enzymes should help to develop platforms for the cheap and sustainable production of high quality steroid compounds for medical use.
Plants produce an impressive array of metabolites, including many medically valuable steroids. Well-known examples of this class of substances obtained from plants are cardenolides. As early as 1785, the British physician William Withering published a book on the red foxglove and its use in medicine . He had found out in experiments that taking extracts of the plant increased the flow of urine in sick people, thus treating water retention in the body.
. Although these two plants belong to different plant families, they both produce large amounts of cardenolides. Since the species studied are not model plants whose genomes have been sequenced and for which many gene functions are known, the project was initially something of a"black box" for the researchers, as they had no existing data sets or standard methods to fall back on.
In addition, the scientists did not even know where the metabolites of interest were accumulated in the different parts of plants."The tissue-specific localization of the cardenolides was crucial for using the genetic data sets in a way that allowed the selection of 13 candidate genes. Comparing these datasets across different plants helped us to reduce the number of candidate genes for further characterization," explains Prashant Sonawane.
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