Authors
Sean R Johnson, Wajid Waheed Bhat, Jacob Bibik, Aiko Turmo, Britta Hamberger, Björn Hamberger, Evolutionary Mint Genomics Consortium
Publication date
2019/1/25
Journal
Journal of Biological Chemistry
Volume
294
Issue
4
Pages
1349-1362
Publisher
Elsevier
Description
Members of the mint family (Lamiaceae) accumulate a wide variety of industrially and medicinally relevant diterpenes. We recently sequenced leaf transcriptomes from 48 phylogenetically diverse Lamiaceae species. Here, we summarize the available chemotaxonomic and enzyme activity data for diterpene synthases (diTPSs) in the Lamiaceae and leverage the new transcriptomes to explore the diTPS sequence and functional space. Candidate genes were selected with an intent to evenly sample the sequence homology space and to focus on species in which diTPS transcripts were found, yet from which no diterpene structures have been previously reported. We functionally characterized nine class II diTPSs and 10 class I diTPSs from 11 distinct plant species and found five class II activities, including two novel activities, as well as a spectrum of class I activities. Among the class II diTPSs, we identified a neo …
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