Odin methyl ether is a marketed plant-derived biopesticide which can be used for the control of plant diseases such as powdery mildew, downy mildew, grey mildew and anthrax. At present, rhubarb-methyl ether needs to be extracted from traditional Chinese medicine rhubarb, but there are many disadvantages, such as harsh and slow plant growth conditions, and low separation of compound abundance, which seriously restrict its market promotion and are difficult to find it in the market.
A research team from the Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Process of the Chinese Academy of Sciences recently published a research paper under the title of "Microbial production of the plant-derived fungicide physcion" in the journal Metabolic Engineering. The successful activation of the diamycin biosynthesis gene cluster using GedR, produced a series of emodin and its downstream metabolic derivatives, and then achieved the efficient accumulation of the precursor compound, emodin, through the knockdown of the key O-methyltransferase gene, gedA. On this basis, various strategies simultaneously explored emodin-3-hydroxyl-O-methyltransferase, and finally obtained six potential enzyme elements; further modified the candidate enzyme gene into the chassis of emodin, which was constructed, and the yield reached 6.3 g / L.
This technology is the first time to realize the efficient microbial synthesis of the plant-derived fungicide rhein-methyl ether, which is expected to realize the change from traditional plant planting and extraction to modern microbial fermentation and production technology.
