title: Biocatalysts for natural product biosynthesis.
abstract: Natural products are important sources of pharmaceuticals, in part owing to their diverse biological activities. Enzymes from natural product biosynthetic pathways have become attractive candidates as biocatalysts for modifying the structures and bioactivities of these complex compounds. Numerous enzymes have been harvested to generate innovative scaffolds, large-scale synthesis of chiral building blocks, and semisynthesis of medicinally relevant natural product derivatives. This review discusses recent examples from three areas: (a) polyketide catalytic domain engineering geared toward synthesis of new polyketides, (b) engineering of tailoring enzymes (other than oxidative enzymes) as biocatalysts, and (c) in vitro total synthesis of natural products using purified enzyme components. With the availability of exponentially increasing genomic information and new genome mining tools, many new and powerful biocatalysts tailored for pharmaceutical synthesis will likely emerge from secondary metabolism.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and.
authors.forename: Nidhi
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Tibrewal
authors.forename: Yi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Tang
mesh_terms: D055162:Biocatalysis; D001688:Biological Products / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism*; D053898:Biosynthetic Pathways; D004798:Enzymes / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism*; D015394:Molecular Structure; D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism; D061065:Polyketides / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism*; D013678:Technology, Pharmaceutical / Q000379:methods
chemical_list: D001688:Biological Products; D004798:Enzymes; D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations; D061065:Polyketides
keywords: domain swapping; protein engineering; total in vitro biosynthesis