Fig. 1: Biosynthetic and biocatalytic routes to BIAs and a parallel cascade adopted in this work. | Nature Communications

Fig. 1: Biosynthetic and biocatalytic routes to BIAs and a parallel cascade adopted in this work.

From: Enzymatic synthesis of benzylisoquinoline alkaloids using a parallel cascade strategy and tyrosinase variants

Fig. 1

a Biosynthetic BIA pathway in plants and examples of the alkaloid formed. L-Tyrosine 4 is converted to L-DOPA 5 by tyrosine hydroxylase (TH), then to dopamine 2 by DOPA decarboxylase (DDC). In a parallel pathway, 4 is converted into 4-HPAA 3 via 4-hydroxyphenylpyruvic acid 6 by tyrosine aminotransferase (TyrAT) and 4-hydroxyphenylpyruvate decarboxylase (4-HPPDC). Compounds 2 and 3 are condensed by the Pictet-Spenglerase norcoclaurine synthase (NCS), generating (S)-norcoclaurine, (S)-1, which is converted into BIAs, such as morphinans, aporphines and protoberberines11,12. b Cascade reactions to BIAs inspired by nature: i. Previous work on in vitro assembly of natural and non-natural BIAs from single amino acid substrate. ii. The in vitro parallel cascade to non-natural BIAs reported in this study.

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