화학공학소재연구정보센터
Journal of the American Chemical Society, Vol.133, No.44, 17540-17543, 2011
Bifunctional Triterpene/Sesquarterpene Cyclase: Tetraprenyl-beta-curcumene Cyclase Is Also Squalene Cyclase in Bacillus megaterium
This study demonstrates that a tetraprenyl-beta-curcumene cyclase, which was originally identified as a sesquarterpene cyclase that converts a head-to-tail type of monocycle to a pentacycle, also cyclizes a tail-to-tail type of linear squalene into a bicyclic triterpenol, 8 alpha-hydroxypolypoda-13,17,21-triene. The 8 alpha-hydroxypolypoda-13,17,21-triene was found to be a natural triterpene from B. megaterium. It was also demonstrated that cyclizations of both tetraprenyl-beta-curcumene and squalene occurred with a purified B. megaterium TC homologue in the same reaction mixture. These results suggest that the tetraprenyl-beta-curcumene cyclase is bifunctional, cyclizing both tetraprenyl-beta-curcumene and squalene in vivo. This is the first report describing a bifunctional terpene cyclase, which biosynthesizes two classes of cyclic terpenes with different numbers of carbons as natural products in the organism.