Discovery and engineering of colchicine alkaloid biosynthesis.

ABSTRACT: 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 species^2-5. 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 cha

SUBMITTER: Nett RS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7958869 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature