查看文章

Halogenation, which was once considered a rare occurrence in nature, has now been observed in many natural product biosynthetic pathways. However, only a small fraction of halogenated compounds have been isolated from terrestrial plants. Given the impact that halogenation can have on the biological activity of natural products, we reasoned that the introduction of halides into medicinal plant metabolism would provide the opportunity to rationally bioengineer a broad variety of novel plant products with altered, and perhaps improved, pharmacological properties. Here we report that chlorination biosynthetic machinery from soil bacteria can be successfully introduced into the medicinal plant Catharanthus roseus (Madagascar periwinkle). These prokaryotic halogenases function within the context of the plant cell to generate chlorinated tryptophan, which is then shuttled into monoterpene indole alkaloid …