Engineering biosynthesis of the anticancer alkaloid noscapine in yeast.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Li Y
PROVIDER: S-EPMC4935968 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Microbial biosynthesis of plant natural products from simple building blocks is a promising approach toward scalable production and modification of high-value compounds. The pathway for biosynthesis of noscapine, a potential anticancer compound, from canadine was recently elucidated as a 10-gene cluster from opium poppy. Here we demonstrate the de novo production of noscapine in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, through the reconstruction of a biosynthetic pathway comprising over 30 enzymes from plants, bacteria, mammals, and yeast itself, including 7 plant endoplasmic reticulum (ER)-localized enzymes. Optimization directed to tuning expression of pathway enzymes, host endogenous metabolic pathways, and fermentation conditions led to an over 18,000-fold improvement from initial noscapine titers to ∼2.2 mg/L. By feeding modified tyrosine derivatives to the optimized noscapine-producing strain we further demonstrated microbial production of halogenated benzylisoquinoline alkaloids. This work highlights the potential for microbial biosynthetic platforms to support the synthesis of valuable and novel alkaloid compounds, which can advance alkaloid-based drug discovery and development.
| S-EPMC5924921 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Microbial biosynthesis of plant natural products (PNPs) can facilitate access to valuable medicinal compounds and derivatives. Such efforts are challenged by metabolite transport limitations, which arise when complex plant pathways distributed across organelles and tissues are reconstructed in unicellular hosts without concomitant transport machinery. We recently reported an engineered yeast platform for production of the tropane alkaloid (TA) drugs hyoscyamine and scopolamine, in which product accumulation is limited by vacuolar transport. Here, we demonstrate that alleviation of transport limitations at multiple steps in an engineered pathway enables increased production of TAs and screening of useful derivatives. We first show that supervised classifier models trained on a tissue-delineated transcriptome from the TA-producing plant Atropa belladonna can predict TA transporters with greater efficacy than conventional regression- and clustering-based approaches. We demonstrate that two of the identified transporters, AbPUP1 and AbLP1, increase TA production in engineered yeast by facilitating vacuolar export and cellular reuptake of littorine and hyoscyamine. We incorporate four different plant transporters, cofactor regeneration mechanisms, and optimized growth conditions into our yeast platform to achieve improvements in de novo hyoscyamine and scopolamine production of over 100-fold (480 μg/L) and 7-fold (172 μg/L). Finally, we leverage computational tools for biosynthetic pathway prediction to produce two different classes of TA derivatives, nortropane alkaloids and tropane N-oxides, from simple precursors. Our work highlights the importance of cellular transport optimization in recapitulating complex PNP biosyntheses in microbial hosts and illustrates the utility of computational methods for gene discovery and expansion of heterologous biosynthetic diversity.
| S-EPMC8237673 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Few complete pathways have been established for the biosynthesis of medicinal compounds from plants. Accordingly, many plant-derived therapeutics are isolated directly from medicinal plants or plant cell culture1. A lead example is colchicine, a US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved treatment for inflammatory disorders that is sourced from Colchicum and Gloriosa species2-5. Here we use a combination of transcriptomics, metabolic logic and pathway reconstitution to elucidate a near-complete biosynthetic pathway to colchicine without prior knowledge of biosynthetic genes, a sequenced genome or genetic tools in the native host. We uncovered eight genes from Gloriosa superba for the biosynthesis of N-formyldemecolcine, a colchicine precursor that contains the characteristic tropolone ring and pharmacophore of colchicine6. Notably, we identified a non-canonical cytochrome P450 that catalyses the remarkable ring expansion reaction that is required to produce the distinct carbon scaffold of colchicine. We further used the newly identified genes to engineer a biosynthetic pathway (comprising 16 enzymes in total) to N-formyldemecolcine in Nicotiana benthamiana starting from the amino acids phenylalanine and tyrosine. This study establishes a metabolic route to tropolone-containing colchicine alkaloids and provides insights into the unique chemistry that plants use to generate complex, bioactive metabolites from simple amino acids.
| S-EPMC7958869 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Madagascar periwinkle (Catharanthus roseus) is the sole source of the anticancer drugs vinblastine and vincristine, bisindole alkaloids derived from the dimerization of the terpenoid indole alkaloids vindoline and catharanthine. Full elucidation of the biosynthetic pathways of these compounds is a prerequisite for metabolic engineering efforts that will improve production of these costly molecules. However, despite the medical and commercial importance of these natural products, the biosynthetic pathways remain poorly understood. Here we report the identification and characterization of a C. roseus cDNA encoding an S-adenosyl-L-methionine-dependent N methyltransferase that catalyzes a nitrogen methylation involved in vindoline biosynthesis. Recombinant enzyme produced in Escherichia coli is highly substrate specific, displaying a strict requirement for a 2,3-dihydro bond in the aspidosperma skeleton. The corresponding gene transcript is induced in methyl jasmonate-elicited seedlings, along with the other known vindoline biosynthetic transcripts. Intriguingly, this unique N methyltransferase is most similar at the amino acid level to the plastidic γ-tocopherol C methyltransferases of vitamin E biosynthesis, suggesting an evolutionary link between these two functionally disparate methyltransferases.
| S-EPMC2973921 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundBetalains, comprising red-violet betacyanins and yellow-orange betaxanthins, are the hydrophilic vacuolar pigments that provide bright coloration to roots, fruits, and flowers of plants of the Caryophyllales order. Betanin extracted from red beets is permitted quantum satis as a natural red food colorant (E162). Due to antioxidant activity, betanin has potential health benefits.ResultsWe applied combinatorial engineering to find the optimal combination of a dozen tyrosine hydroxylase (TyH) and 4,5-dopa-estradiol-dioxygenase (DOD) variants. The best-engineered Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains produced over six-fold higher betaxanthins than previously reported. By genome-resequencing of these strains, we found out that two copies of DOD enzyme from Bougainvillea glabra together with TyH enzymes from Abronia nealleyi, Acleisanthes obtusa, and Cleretum bellidiforme were present in the three high-betaxanthin-producing isolates. Next, we expressed four variants of glucosyltransferases from Beta vulgaris for betanin biosynthesis. The highest titer of betanin (30.8 ± 0.14 mg/L after 48 h from 20 g/L glucose) was obtained when completing the biosynthesis pathway with UGT73A36 glucosyltransferase from Beta vulgaris. Finally, we investigated betalain transport in CEN.PK and S288C strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and identified a possible role of transporter genes QDR2 and APL1 in betanin transport.ConclusionsThis study shows the potential of combinatorial engineering of yeast cell factories for the biotechnological production of betanin.
| S-EPMC10436450 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Noscapine, a phthalide isoquinoline alkaloid isolated from the opium poppy Papaver somniferum, is traditionally being used as an anticough drug. With a safe in vitro toxicological profile, noscapine and its analogues have been explored to show microtubule-regulating properties and anticancer activity against various mammalian cancer cell lines. Since then, our group and other research groups worldwide are working on developing new noscapinoids to tap its potential as the leading drug molecule. With our continuing efforts, we herein present synthesis and anticancer evaluation of a series of imidazothiazole-coupled noscapinoids 7a-o and 11a-o. Natural ?-noscapine was N-demethylated to nornoscapine 4 and then reacted with 4-(chloromethyl) thiazole-2-amine. The resultant noscapinoid 5 was coupled with various bromomethyl ketones 10a-o to give N-imidazothiazolyl noscapinoids 7a-o in very good yields. Similarly, natural ?-noscapine 1 was O-demethylated using sodium azide/sodium iodide, reacted with 4-(chloromethyl)thiazole-2-amine, and coupled with bromomethyl ketones 10a-o to result in O-imidazothiazolyl noscapinoids 11a-o. All the new analogues 7a-o and 11a-o were fully characterized by their NMR and mass spectral analysis. In vitro cytotoxicity assay was performed for compounds 5, 7a-o, 9, and 11a-o against four different cancer cell lines: HeLa (cervical), MIA PaCa-2 (pancreatic), SK-N-SH (neuroblastoma), and DU145 (prostate cancer). Among these conjugates, 5, 7a, 9, 11b, 11c, 11e, and 11o showed potent cytotoxicity with low IC50 values. Further, flow cytometry analysis revealed that MIA PaCa-2 cells treated with these compounds induced cell cycle G2/M-phase arrest. In addition, Western blot analysis revealed that the cells treated with these conjugates accumulate tubulin in the soluble fraction and also elevate cyclin-B1 protein expression levels. Moreover, the conjugates also increased the expression of caspase-3 and PARP levels which is indicative of apoptotic cell death. In silico molecular docking studies showed several noncovalent interactions like van der Waals and hydrogen-bonding with tubulin protein and with good binding energy. The results indicated that these noscapine analogues may serve as novel compounds that can possibly inhibit tubulin protein and can be considered for further optimization as a clinical candidate for treating pancreatic cancer.
| S-EPMC6868913 | biostudies-literature
Project description:To identify the molecular basis of genome-wide transcriptome analysis in induced opium poppy capsule tissues NimbleGen microarray (12X135 K element) analysis was performed. Fungal elicitor methyl jasmonate (MeJa) treatment was applied on capsules of opium poppy during 0, 3, and 12 h. Four sample sets were prepared for array analyses: i) control ii) 0 hour after treatment iii) 3 hour after treatment iv) 12 h after treatment
2014-02-21 | E-GEOD-55196 | biostudies-arrayexpress
Project description:Plants produce a large variety of low-molecular-weight and specialized secondary compounds. Among them, nitrogen-containing alkaloids are the most biologically active and are often used in the pharmaceutical industry. Although alkaloid chemistry has been intensively investigated, characterization of alkaloid biosynthesis, including biosynthetic enzyme genes and their regulation, especially the transcription factors involved, has been relatively delayed, since only a limited number of plant species produce these specific types of alkaloids in a tissue/cell-specific or developmental-specific manner. Recent advances in molecular biology technologies, such as RNA sequencing, co-expression analysis of transcripts and metabolites, and functional characterization of genes using recombinant technology and cutting-edge technology for metabolite identification, have enabled a more detailed characterization of alkaloid pathways. Thus, transcriptional regulation of alkaloid biosynthesis by transcription factors, such as basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH), APETALA2/ethylene-responsive factor (AP2/ERF), and WRKY, is well elucidated. In addition, jasmonate signaling, an important cue in alkaloid biosynthesis, and its cascade, interaction of transcription factors, and post-transcriptional regulation are also characterized and show cell/tissue-specific or developmental regulation. Furthermore, current sequencing technology provides more information on the genome structure of alkaloid-producing plants with large and complex genomes, for genome-wide characterization. Based on the latest information, we discuss the application of transcription factors in alkaloid engineering.
| S-EPMC8615522 | biostudies-literature
Project description:To identify the molecular basis of genome-wide transcriptome analysis in induced opium poppy capsule tissues NimbleGen microarray (12X135 K element) analysis was performed. Fungal elicitor methyl jasmonate (MeJa) treatment was applied on capsules of opium poppy during 0, 3, and 12 h.
2014-02-21 | GSE55196 | GEO
Project description:In present investigation, an attempt was undertaken to modify the C-9 position of noscapine (Nos), an opium alkaloid to yield 9 -hydroxy methyl and 9 -carbaldehyde oxime analogues for augmenting anticancer potential. The synthesis of 9-hydroxy methyl analogue of Nos was carried out by Blanc reaction and 9-carbaldehyde oxime was engineered by oxime formation method and characterized using FT-IR, 1H NMR, 13C NMR, mass spectroscopy, and so on techniques. In silico docking techniques informed that 9-hydroxy methyl and 9-carbaldehyde oxime analogues of Nos had higher binding energy score as compared to Nos. The IC50 of Nos was estimated to be 46.8 µM signficantly (P < 0.05) higher than 8.2 µM of 9-carbaldehyde oxime and 4.6 µM of 9-hydroxy methyl analogue of Nos in U87, human glioblastoma cells. Moreover, there was significant (P < 0.05) difference between the IC50 of 9-carbaldehyde oxime and 9-hydroxy methyl analogue of Nos. Consistent to in vitro cytotoxicity data, 9-hydroxy methyl analogue of Nos induced significantly (P < 0.05) higher degree of apoptosis of 84.6% in U87 cells as compared to 78.5% and 64.3% demonstrated by 9-carbaldehyde oxime and Nos, respectively. Thus the higher therapeutic efficacy of 9-hydroxy methyl analogue of Nos may be credited to higher solubility and inhibitory constant (K).
| S-EPMC6925231 | biostudies-literature