posted on 2019-01-16, 04:29authored bySean Lund, Rachael Hall, Gavin J Williams
Isoprenoids are constructed
in nature using hemiterpene building
blocks that are biosynthesized from lengthy enzymatic pathways with
little opportunity to deploy precursor-directed biosynthesis. Here,
an artificial alcohol-dependent hemiterpene biosynthetic pathway was
designed and coupled to several isoprenoid biosynthetic systems, affording
lycopene and a prenylated tryptophan in robust yields. This approach
affords a potential route to diverse non-natural hemiterpenes and
by extension isoprenoids modified with non-natural chemical functionality.
Accordingly, the prototype chemo-enzymatic pathway is a critical first
step toward the construction of engineered microbial strains for bioconversion
of simple scalable building blocks into complex isoprenoid scaffolds.