ISSN:
0570-0833
Keywords:
Vitamins
;
Natural products
;
Biosynthesis
;
Chemistry
;
General Chemistry
Source:
Wiley InterScience Backfile Collection 1832-2000
Topics:
Chemistry and Pharmacology
Notes:
This review contains an account of recent experimental results in the continuing saga of vitamin B12 biosynthesis (largely from the author's laboratory) as well as a personal view of future directions of research in natural product biosynthesis. The emphasis is on the powerful combination of molecular biology in the search for, and the expression of, the genes encoding the biosynthetic enzymes and state-of-the-art spectroscopic techniques, in order to “view” the biochemical events as they take place in the NMR tube. As a logical development of these approaches, the feasibility of one-flask, multienzyme synthesis of natural products is addressed.[Based on a lecture given at the 27th Euchem Conference on Stereochemistry, 26th April to 4th May, 1992. Bürgenstock, Switzerland. A more explicit account of this new field has been given in “Genetically Engineered Synthesis of Complex Natural Products” (A. I. Scott Terruhedron, 1992, 48, 2559).] Implicit throughout is the profound change in the “tools of the trade” of the bioorganic chemist, thanks to the harnessing and exploitation of cloning techniques and the resultant availability of enzymes which can make carbon-carbon bonds. It is also our desire to alert organic chemists, who may wish to take advantage of these technical developments, to the fact that they will be rewarded by a new world of natural catalysts capable of high yielding, synthetic chemistry often with a surprising, but welcome, lack of substrate specificity. Finally we hope to convey our enthusiasm for the methods now at the disposal of present and future generations of chemists for studying Nature's synthetic routes to complex natural products.
Additional Material:
23 Ill.
Type of Medium:
Electronic Resource
URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/anie.199312233
