title: Molecular Diversity of Terpene Synthases in the Liverwort Marchantia polymorpha.
abstract: Marchantia polymorpha is a basal terrestrial land plant, which like most liverworts accumulates structurally diverse terpenes believed to serve in deterring disease and herbivory. Previous studies have suggested that the mevalonate and methylerythritol phosphate pathways, present in evolutionarily diverged plants, are also operative in liverworts. However, the genes and enzymes responsible for the chemical diversity of terpenes have yet to be described. In this study, we resorted to a HMMER search tool to identify 17 putative terpene synthase genes from M. polymorpha transcriptomes. Functional characterization identified four diterpene synthase genes phylogenetically related to those found in diverged plants and nine rather unusual monoterpene and sesquiterpene synthase-like genes. The presence of separate monofunctional diterpene synthases for ent-copalyl diphosphate and ent-kaurene biosynthesis is similar to orthologs found in vascular plants, pushing the date of the underlying gene duplication and neofunctionalization of the ancestral diterpene synthase gene family to >400 million years ago. By contrast, the mono- and sesquiterpene synthases represent a distinct class of enzymes, not related to previously described plant terpene synthases and only distantly so to microbial-type terpene synthases. The absence of a Mg2+binding, aspartate-rich, DDXXD motif places these enzymes in a noncanonical family of terpene synthases.
authors.affiliation: Plant Biology Program and Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40536-0082.
authors.forename: Santosh
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-6605-6686
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kumar
authors.affiliation: Plant Biology Program and Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40536-0082.
authors.forename: Chase
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-5250-1291
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Kempinski
authors.affiliation: Plant Biology Program and Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40536-0082.
authors.forename: Xun
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhuang
authors.affiliation: Gradaute School of Genome Science and Technology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee 37996-0840.
authors.forename: Ayla
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-7603-6726
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Norris
authors.affiliation: Roy J. Carver Department of Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Molecular Biology, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011.
authors.forename: Sibongile
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-8049-8798
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Mafu
authors.affiliation: Roy J. Carver Department of Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Molecular Biology, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011.
authors.forename: Jiachen
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-0212-1282
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zi
authors.affiliation: Plant Biology Program and Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40536-0082.
authors.forename: Stephen A
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-8053-4042
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Bell
authors.affiliation: Plant Biology Program and Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40536-0082.
authors.forename: Stephen Eric
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-7884-7787
authors.initials: SE
authors.lastname: Nybo
authors.affiliation: Plant Biology Program and Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40536-0082.
authors.forename: Scott E
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-0405-2655
authors.initials: SE
authors.lastname: Kinison
authors.affiliation: Plant Biology Program and Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40536-0082.
authors.forename: Zuodong
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.affiliation: Plant Biology Program and Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40536-0082.
authors.forename: Sheba
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-0737-5732
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Goklany
authors.affiliation: Plant Biology Program and Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40536-0082.
authors.forename: Kristin B
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-7145-4884
authors.initials: KB
authors.lastname: Linscott
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Sciences, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee 37996-4561.
authors.forename: Xinlu
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-7560-6125
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Gradaute School of Genome Science and Technology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee 37996-0840.
authors.forename: Qidong
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Jia
authors.affiliation: Departments of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences and Pharmaceutical Chemistry, California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, University of California, San Francisco, California 94158-2330.
authors.forename: Shoshana D
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-0875-4902
authors.initials: SD
authors.lastname: Brown
authors.affiliation: School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC 3800, Australia.
authors.forename: John L
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-4691-8477
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Bowman
authors.affiliation: Departments of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences and Pharmaceutical Chemistry, California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, University of California, San Francisco, California 94158-2330.
authors.forename: Patricia C
authors.initials: PC
authors.lastname: Babbitt
authors.affiliation: Roy J. Carver Department of Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Molecular Biology, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011.
authors.forename: Reuben J
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-4691-8477
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Peters
authors.affiliation: Gradaute School of Genome Science and Technology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee 37996-0840.|Department of Plant Sciences, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee 37996-4561.
authors.forename: Feng
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-0875-4902
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Plant Biology Program and Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40536-0082 chappell@uky.edu.
authors.forename: Joe
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-8469-8976
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Chappell
mesh_terms: D019883:Alkyl and Aryl Transferases / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D047008:Marchantia / Q000201:enzymology* / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D059467:Transcriptome / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D019883:Alkyl and Aryl Transferases; C108877:terpene synthase