ABSTRACT
C-Glycosides are important natural products with various bioactivities. In plant biosynthetic pathways, the C-glycosylation step is usually catalyzed by C-glycosyltransferases (CGTs), and most of them prefer to accept uridine 5'-diphosphate glucose (UDP-Glc) as sugar donor. No CGTs favoring UDP-rhamnose (UDP-Rha) as sugar donor has been reported, thus far. Herein, we report the first selective C-rhamnosyltransferase VtCGTc from the medicinal plant Viola tricolor. VtCGTc could efficiently catalyze C-rhamnosylation of 2-hydroxynaringenin 3-C-glucoside, and exhibited high selectivity towards UDP-Rha. Mechanisms for the sugar donor selectivity of VtCGTc were investigated by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and molecular mechanics with generalized Born and surface area solvation (MM/GBSA) binding free energy calculations. Val144 played a vital role in recognizing UDP-Rha, and the V144T mutant could efficiently utilize UDP-Glc. This work provides a new and efficient approach to prepare flavonoid C-rhamnosides such as violanthin and iso-violanthin.
ABSTRACT
Huang-Qin is a traditional Chinese medicine with antiviral, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory activities. Its major bioactive compounds are diverse flavone O-glucuronides and glucosides. Although three flavonoid O-glycosyltransferases have been identified from S. baicalensis, this information is not sufficient to elucidate the structural diversity of flavonoid glycosides. In this study, nine glycosyltransferase candidate genes were discovered from S. baicalensis by BLAST analysis and their functions were characterized after heterologous expression. Three new flavone O-glycosyltransferases were able to catalyze the formation of major compounds in S. baicalensis, including baicalin and wogonoside. These enzymes could also utilize exogenous flavones as sugar acceptors. This work further elucidates biosynthetic pathways for Scutellaria flavonoid O-glycosides.
