Original title: Characterization of two key cytochrome P450 enzymes in Isodon amethystoides and de novo production of 3α,15β-dihydroxy-ent-kaurene in yeast
Yanying Chen, Xinqi Song, Yanan Wang, Yang Han +8 · August 2026
Glaucocalyxin A is a valuable medicinal plant chemical, but making it through standard chemistry is difficult because yields are low and the routes are complicated. Scientists also do not fully know how plants make it. To solve this, researchers found two enzymes in the plant Isodon amethystoides: IamCYP71D761 and IamCYP706V18. Enzymes are helper proteins that speed up cellular reactions. These two enzymes accurately add oxygen and hydrogen tags to a starter molecule called ent-kaureneA specific hydrocarbon molecule that serves as the starting point for many plant compounds., turning it into 3α,15β-dihydroxy-ent-kaurene, also called 3. Compound 3 is a key ingredient for making glaucocalyxin A. The team then engineered common yeast cells to manufacture compound 3 from scratch, successfully producing 24.0 ± 0.2 mg/L in shake flask cultures.
Imagine you are assembling a complex LEGO model from instructions, but the instructions skip the steps for attaching two crucial bricks that give the model its final shape. Without those steps, you cannot finish the model. In this paper, the researchers found that the plant uses two specific enzymes to attach these two 'bricks' (oxygen atoms) at precise locations on the core molecule, and then they moved the instructions for those enzymes into yeast so the yeast could complete the assembly.
Glaucocalyxin A is a promising compound for new medicines, but making it chemically is extremely difficult. By identifying the key enzymes used by nature, scientists can now produce a critical precursor in yeast, a common industrial organism. This opens the door to large-scale, sustainable production of this and related compounds for drug development.
This work achieves only the precursor, not the final compound glaucocalyxin A. The yield of 24 mg/L is still modest for industrial scale, and the platform has only been tested in shake flasks. The full pathway to GLA requires additional unknown enzymes.
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Characterization of two key cytochrome P450 enzymes in Isodon amethystoides and de novo production of 3α,15β-dihydroxy-ent-kaurene in yeast — Yanying Chen, Xinqi Song, Yanan Wang et al. — Synthetic and systems biotechnology — doi:10.1016/j.synbio.2026.08.004
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.