Modification of C20 oxidase in tanshinone biosynthesis pathway / 中国中药杂志

Tanshinones are one of the main effective components of Salvia miltiorrhiza, which play important roles in the treatment of cardiovascular diseases. Microbial heterogony production of tanshinones can provide a large number of raw materials for the production of traditional Chinese medicine(TCM) preparations containing S. miltiorrhiza, reduce the extraction cost, and relieve the pressure of clinical medication. The biosynthetic pathway of tanshinones contains multiple P450 enzymes, and the catalytic element with high efficiency is the basis of microbial production of tanshinones. In this study, the protein modification of CYP76AK1, a key P450-C20 hydroxylase in tanshinone pathway, was researched. The protein modeling methods SWISS-MODEL, Robetta, and AlphaFold2 were used, and the protein model was analyzed to obtain the reliable protein structure. The semi-rational design of mutant protein was carried out by molecular docking and homologous alignment. The key amino acid sites affecting the oxidation activity of CYP76AK1 were identified by molecular docking. The function of the obtained mutations was studied with yeast expression system, and the CYP76AK1 mutations with continuous oxidation function to 11-hydroxysugiol were obtained. Four key amino acid sites that affected the oxidation acti-vity were analyzed, and the reliability of three protein modeling methods was analyzed according to the mutation results. The effective protein modification sites of CYP76AK1 were reported for the first time in this study, which provides a catalytic element for different oxidation activities at C20 site for the study of the synthetic biology of tanshinones and lays a foundation for the analysis of the conti-nuous oxidation mechanism of P450-C20 modification.

Biopathway construction of plant natural products / 药学学报

Plant natural products (PNPs) are important sources of innovative drugs. They are mainly obtained by isolation or extraction from plants. Low content and with structural analogues in plants result in high production cost, which restricts the research and application of PNPs. While biopathway construction by synthetic biology provides an alternative for production of PNPs. By biosynthetic pathway analysis of PNPs and reconstructing the biopathway in microorganisms, we can produce PNPs in cell factories efficiently. Recently, several predominantly international reports about biosynthesis of PNPs and its synthetic biology production, triggered the researches of PNPs. Abundant traditional Chinese medicine resources and profound cultural heritage of Chinese medicine make biosynthesis pathway analysis of PNPs to be a research hotspot. And some of the studies have achieved significant progress. Here, recent progress in the biosynthesis of plant natural products and its synthetic biology was reviewed. In particular, the application of new methods and technologies in recent years were summarized and discussed. This will provide reference for the biopathway construction of plant natural products.

Accumulation and biosynthetic of curcuminoids and terpenoids in turmeric rhizome in different development periods / 中国中药杂志

The dynamic accumulation rule of active substances in medicinal plants is of great value not only for medicinal material production and application,but also for the genetic mechanism study on the formation of medicinal ingredients,especially vital to guide medicinal material collection as well as experiment material selection and candidate gene screening in the analysis of biosynthesis pathway. This study investigated the accumulation of curcumins and terpenoids,and the biosynthesis of these metabolites,which are the active metabolites in Curcuma longa,a commonly used traditional Chinese medicine. Rhizoma of C. longa from leaf growing period,rhizome swelling period and dry matter accumulating period were used as experimental materials,to analyze the changes of metabolites and biosynthesis in the three periods by comparative transcriptome and metabolomes analysis.The results indicated that terpenoids accumulation and biosynthesis mainly occurred in leaf growing period,while curcumin accumulation and biosynthesis mainly occurred in dry matter accumulating period. Therefore,we suggested that turmeric rhizomes in leaf growth period were suitable for terpenoids biosynthetic pathway characterization,and rhizome in accumulation of dry matter period was suitable for curcuminoid biosynthesis pathway characterization. This study provides references for medicinal materialproduction and application,as well as biopathway analysis of active compounds for C. longa.

Multivariate data analysis of volatile metabolites in rhizomes and radixes of four medicinal plants from Curcuma L / 药学学报

The commonly used traditional Chinese medicines Curcumae Rhizome (Ezhu) and Curcumae Radix (Yujin), are representatives of multi-plant sources. The relationship among the original source plant species is intricate. In this study, by using multivariate data analysis, volatile metabolites in rhizomes and radixes of source plants of Curcumae Longae rhizome (Jianghuang), Yujin and Ezhu in traditional Chinese medicine were compared and analyzed. The source plants included Curcuma longa, Curcuma kwangsuensis, Curcuma wenyujing and Curcuma phaeocaulis. The results indicated that:① volatile metabolites were similar in quality but variation in quantity for rhizomes and radixes origin from the same plant species; ② volatile metabolites of C. longa rhizomes showed bigger difference compared with others; ③ although common volatile metabolites were observed in rhizome of C. kwangsuensis, C. wenyujing and C. phaeocaulis, the difference among them were significant; and ④ significant differences were observed for the four kinds of radixes. Results in this study revealed the differences of the four source plants species, and similar metabolites in source plants of Curcumae Rhizome (Ezhu) and Curcumae Radix (Yujin) from the level of volatile metabolites. These results provided a reference for the clinical use of the three kinds of traditional Chinese medicine.