Volume 62, Issue 38 e202307995
Research Article

Discovering Dynamic Plant Enzyme Complexes in Yeast for Kratom Alkaloid Pathway Identification**

Dr. Yinan Wu

Dr. Yinan Wu

Robert F. Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Cornell University, 14853 Ithaca, NY, USA

These authors contributed equally to this work.

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Chang Liu

Chang Liu

Robert F. Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Cornell University, 14853 Ithaca, NY, USA

These authors contributed equally to this work.

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Dr. Anna Koganitsky

Dr. Anna Koganitsky

Robert F. Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Cornell University, 14853 Ithaca, NY, USA

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Franklin L. Gong

Franklin L. Gong

Robert F. Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Cornell University, 14853 Ithaca, NY, USA

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Prof. Sijin Li

Corresponding Author

Prof. Sijin Li

Robert F. Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Cornell University, 14853 Ithaca, NY, USA

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First published: 07 August 2023
**

A previous version of this manuscript has been deposited on a preprint server (https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.01.16.524293).

Graphical Abstract

Yeast-based protein-protein interaction (PPI) screening identified dynamic enzyme complexes and biosynthetic pathways they organize from a rare plant, kratom. PPI screening identified four functional medium-chain dehydrogenases (MsMDRs) interacting with strictosidine β-D-glucosidase (MsSGD), leading to four novel pathway branches. This study highlights how leveraging post-translational regulation features can accelerate the discovery of biosynthetic pathways in plants.

Abstract

Discovering natural product biosynthetic pathways of medicinal plants is challenging and laborious. Capturing the coregulation patterns of pathway enzymes, particularly transcriptomic regulation, has proven an effective method to accelerate pathway identification. In this study, we developed a yeast-based screening method to capture the protein-protein interactions (PPI) between plant enzymes, which is another useful pattern to complement the prevalent approach. Combining this method with plant multiomics analysis, we discovered four enzyme complexes and their organized pathways from kratom, an alkaloid-producing plant. The four pathway branches involved six enzymes, including a strictosidine synthase, a strictosidine β-D-glucosidase (MsSGD), and four medium-chain dehydrogenase/reductases (MsMDRs). PPI screening selected six MsMDRs interacting with MsSGD from 20 candidates predicted by multiomics analysis. Four of the six MsMDRs were then characterized as functional, indicating the high selectivity of the PPI screening method. This study highlights the opportunity of leveraging post-translational regulation features to discover novel plant natural product biosynthetic pathways.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available in the supplementary material of this article.

The full text of this article hosted at iucr.org is unavailable due to technical difficulties.