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Digging for answers, smelling a hint of success and tasting triumph

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The C12 'earthy' odorant geosmin is derived from the C15 metabolite farnesyl diphosphate. Metabolic transformation now seems to be catalyzed by a bifunctional protein having two operatively independent sesquiterpene synthase domains. The domains are catalytically linked through the passive diffusion of a C15 alcohol product of the N-terminal catalytic domain to the C-terminal catalytic domain for the final steps of geosmin formation.

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Figure 1: Schematic depiction of the bifunctional germacradienol-geosmin synthase.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Joseph P. Noel is an investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, Jack H. Skirball Center for Chemical Biology and Proteomics, 10010 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, California 92037, USA. noel@salk.edu,

    Joseph P Noel

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  1. Joseph P Noel
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Competing interests

J.P.N. is a scientific cofounder of and stockholder in Allylix, Inc., which is engaged in the commercial production of high-value sesquiterpene products.

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Noel, J. Digging for answers, smelling a hint of success and tasting triumph. Nat Chem Biol 3, 690–691 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchembio1107-690

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