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Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology

, Volume 73, Issue 5, pp 980–990 | Cite as

Biosynthesis and engineering of isoprenoid small molecules

  • Sydnor T. Withers
  • Jay D. Keasling
Mini-Review
First Online:
Received:
Revised:
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Abstract

Isoprenoid secondary metabolites are a rich source of commercial products that have not been fully explored. At present, there are isoprenoid products used in cancer therapy, the treatment of infectious diseases, and crop protection. All isoprenoids share universal prenyl diphosphate precursors synthesized via two distinct pathways. From these universal precursors, the biosynthetic pathways to specific isoprenoids diverge resulting in a staggering array of products. Taking advantage of this diversity has been the focus of much effort in metabolic engineering heterologous hosts. In addition, the engineering of the mevalonate pathway has increased levels of the universal precursors available for heterologous production. Finally, we will describe the efforts to produce to commercial terpenoids, paclitaxel and artemisinin.

Keywords

Isoprenoids Terpenes Synthetic biology Metabolic engineering Artemisinin 
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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag 2006

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of Chemical EngineeringUniversity of CaliforniaBerkeleyUSA
  2. 2.Department of BioengineeringUniversity of CaliforniaBerkeleyUSA
  3. 3.Berkeley Center for Synthetic BiologyPhysical Bioscience Division, Lawrence Berkeley National LaboratoryBerkeleyUSA
  4. 4.California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research (QB3)University of CaliforniaBerkeleyUSA

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