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Chemical biology

Synthetic metabolism goes green

Nature volume 468, pages 380–381 (2010)Cite this article

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An extension of synthetic biology to a medicinal plant involves the transfer of chlorination equipment from bacteria. This exercise adds implements to the enzymatic toolbox for generating natural products. See Letter p.461

Plants offer a wondrous diversity of natural products for the chemist to explore and manipulate1. Their genetic, developmental and ecological complexity makes them tough targets, but O'Connor and colleagues (page 461 of this issue2) now provide an impressive example of how a plant's biosynthetic pathways can be tuned to fruitful ends.

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Figure 1: Catharanthus roseus, more commonly known as the Madagascar periwinkle.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Joseph P. Noel is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the Jack H. Skirball Center for Chemical Biology and Proteomics, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California 92037, USA. noel@salk.edu,

    Joseph P. Noel

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  1. Joseph P. Noel
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Noel, J. Synthetic metabolism goes green. Nature 468, 380–381 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/468380a

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