Form of Taxadiene Synthase Involved in Paclitaxel
Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics Vol. 379, No. 1, July 1, pp. 137–146, 2000 doi:10.1006/abbi.2000.1865, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on Heterologous Expression and Characterization of a “Pseudomature” Form of Taxadiene Synthase Involved in Paclitaxel (Taxol) Biosynthesis and Evaluation of a Potential Intermediate and Inhibitors of the Multistep Diterpene Cyclization Reaction1 David C. Williams,* Mark R. Wildung,* Alan Qingwu Jin,† Dolan Dalal,‡ John S. Oliver,‡ Robert M. Coates,† and Rodney Croteau2 *Institute of Biological Chemistry, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington 99164-6340; †Department of Chemistry, University of Illinois, 600 South Matthews Avenue, Urbana, Illinois 61801; and ‡Department of Chemistry, Box H, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island 02912 Received February 23, 2000, and in revised form April 4, 2000 with kinetics comparable to the native enzyme. In ad- The diterpene cyclase taxadiene synthase from yew dition to the major product, taxa-4(5),11(12)-diene (Taxus) species transforms geranylgeranyl diphos- (94%), this enzyme produces a small amount of the phate to taxa-4(5),11(12)-diene as the first committed isomeric taxa-4(20),11(12)-diene (ϳϳ5%), and a product step in the biosynthesis of the anti-cancer drug Taxol. tentatively identified as verticillene (ϳϳ1%). Isotopi- Taxadiene synthase is translated as a preprotein bear- cally sensitive branching experiments utilizing (4R)- 2 ing an N-terminal targeting sequence for localization [4- H1]geranylgeranyl diphosphate confirmed that the to and processing in the plastids. Overexpression of two taxadiene isomers, and a third (taxa-3(4),11(12)- the full-length preprotein in Escherichia coli and pu- diene), are derived from the same intermediate tax- rification are compromised by host codon usage, inclu- enyl C4-carbocation.
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