Study raises possibility of linking up enzymes to tailor
pathways for increased production of useful plant products
Plant scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's
Brookhaven National Laboratory have found that certain enzymes responsible for
desaturating fatty acids, the building blocks of oils, can link up to
efficiently pass intermediate products from one enzyme to another.
"Engineering these enzyme interactions to channel metabolites along desired
metabolic pathways could be a new approach for tailoring plants to produce
useful products," said Brookhaven biochemist John Shanklin, lead author on
a paper reporting the results in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.