Enzymatic Assembly Line Overview
Earlier this year, research at the Kee-Hong Kim lab of Purdue University had preliminary evidence showing that a trans-stilbene compound, Piceatannol, had an ability to inhibit the development of human adipose cells. The mechanism is based around the idea that Piceatannol interacts with a preadipocyte's (immature fat cell) insulin receptors in such a way that surpresses it's growth into a mature adipose cell. Piceatannol is a metabolite of resveratrol, a compoud currently under investigation for possible anti-cancer properites. Piceatannol differs from resveratrol by one hydroxyl group on one of the aromatic rings.
Piceatannol is currently very costly to synthesize. On the advent of such a discovery, we felt that if we were to engineer a pathway to optimize the production of Piceatannol from cheaper substrates through the utilization of our PUF and RNA scaffold projects, we could show the versatility of our PUF toolkit working with an RNA scaffold.
However, before researchers can begin using our PUF toolkit to produce piceatannol in vivo, we took steps to acquire and characterize the necessary genes for our:
Enzymatic Assembly Line Overview
Earlier this year, research at the Kee-Hong Kim lab of Purdue University had preliminary evidence showing that a trans-stilbene compound, Piceatannol, had an ability to inhibit the development of human adipose cells. The mechanism is based around the idea that Piceatannol interacts with a preadipocyte's (immature fat cell) insulin receptors in such a way that surpresses it's growth into a mature adipose cell. Piceatannol is a metabolite of resveratrol, a compoud currently under investigation for possible anti-cancer properites. Piceatannol differs from resveratrol by one hydroxyl group on one of the aromatic rings.
Piceatannol is currently very costly to synthesize. On the advent of such a discovery, we felt that if we were to engineer a pathway to optimize the production of Piceatannol from cheaper substrates through the utilization of our PUF and RNA scaffold projects, we could show the versatility of our PUF toolkit working with an RNA scaffold.
However, before researchers can begin using our PUF toolkit to produce piceatannol in vivo, we took steps to acquire and characterize the necessary genes for our:
Design and Theory
The above is our theoretical construct involving the three aforementioned genes.
As labeled, the sequence of enzymatic activity begins at TAL, which converts the naturally present amino acid in E. Coli, Tyrosine, into p-Coumaric Acid. A substrate could be hypothetically processed by these sequential proteins, resulting in a molecular, in vivo assembly line in E. Coli. Such an assembly line could possibly be optimized, as shown by data provided by
RNA scaffold section.
The following is a technical diagram of the stepwise modifications and production of Piceatannol from Tyrosine. The only substrate that needs to be input is the Malonyl-CoA in order to supplement the 4CL:STS.