Repeated evolution of cytochrome P450-mediated spiroketal steroid biosynthesis in plants
Name
s41467-019-11286-7.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.26 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
26a2d8fba46597cbe4ea2863b74a9625
Author(s)
Christ, Bastien
Xu, Chengchao
Xu, Menglong
Li, Fu-Shuang
Mitchell, Andrew J.
Weng, Jing-Ke
Date Issued
July 19, 2019
Journal
Nature communications
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Citation
Christ, Bastien et al. "Repeated evolution of cytochrome P450-mediated spiroketal steroid biosynthesis in plants." Nature communications 10 (2019): 1038 © 2019 The Author(s)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Diosgenin is a spiroketal steroidal natural product extracted from plants and used as the single most important precursor for the world steroid hormone industry. The sporadic occurrences of diosgenin in distantly related plants imply possible independent biosynthetic origins. The characteristic 5,6-spiroketal moiety in diosgenin is reminiscent of the spiroketal moiety present in anthelmintic avermectins isolated from actinomycete bacteria. How plants gained the ability to biosynthesize spiroketal natural products is unknown. Here, we report the diosgenin-biosynthetic pathways in himalayan paris (Paris polyphylla), a monocot medicinal plant with hemostatic and antibacterial properties, and fenugreek (Trigonella foenum–graecum), an eudicot culinary herb plant commonly used as a galactagogue. Both plants have independently recruited pairs of cytochromes P450 that catalyze oxidative 5,6-spiroketalization of cholesterol to produce diosgenin, with evolutionary progenitors traced to conserved phytohormone metabolism. This study paves the way for engineering the production of diosgenin and derived analogs in heterologous hosts.
Subjects
General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
General Physics and Astronomy
General Chemistry
MIT Department
Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biology
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-11286-7
