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Journal of Bacteriology, June 2004, p. 3631-3639, Vol. 186, No. 11
0021-9193/04/$08.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/JB.186.11.3631-3639.2004
Copyright © 2004, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z3, Canada,1 Physical Biosciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 947202
Received 11 December 2003/ Accepted 26 February 2004
Diterpenoids are naturally occurring plant compounds which have pharmaceutical properties. We have sequenced a 10.4-kbp extension of the dit cluster in Pseudomonas abietaniphila BKME-9, containing genes involved in abietane diterpenoid biodegradation. The ditQ gene was found to encode a cytochrome P450 monooxygenase, P450dit, and to be homologous to the tdtD gene of Pseudomonas diterpeniphila A19-6a. Knocking out ditQ had little effect on growth of BKME-9 on abietic acid but severely impaired growth on dehydroabietic acid (DhA) and palustric acid (PaA), increasing doubling times from 3.8 to 15 h on DhA and from 5.6 to 18.5 h on PaA. A xylE transcriptional fusion showed that transcription of ditQ was induced by a range of diterpenoids. Substrate binding assays of P450dit expressed in Escherichia coli revealed that DhA binds to the enzyme and yields a type I binding spectrum with a Kd of 0.4 µM. These results indicate that P450dit is involved in the metabolism of DhA and PaA and are consistent with its putative role in converting DhA to 7-hydroxy-DhA. Finally, an amino acid sequence identity of greater than 72% and conserved gene arrangement support the hypothesis that the dit gene cluster of P. abietaniphila BKME-9 and the tdt cluster of P. diterpeniphila A19-6a contain functional homologues.
Dedicated to the memory of our colleague, R. C. Wyndham.
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