Chemical basis for bioluminescence in glowing fungi uncovered

[Cathal (Phone)]

Woohoo, turns out P.stipticus' bioluminescence *is* a classical enzymatic-redox reaction after all, instead of some crazy lignin/ROS reaction! So, transferable *and* potentially improve-able/hackable.

And because P.stipticus is a native EU species, is easy to cultivate, and could be cisgenically engineered, this would make a fun hacking project for a consortium of EU hackers...? :)
http://phys.org/news/2015-06-fungi-green-chemical-basis-bioluminescence.htmlhttp://phys.org/news/2015-06-fungi-green-chemical-basis-bioluminescence.html
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[Patrik D'haeseleer]

Nice! Now we just need a hispidin biosynthesis pathway...

MetaCyc mentions that hispidin can be produced by styrypyrone synthase, which normally produces bis-noryangonin (an offshoot from the resveratrol biosyntheis pathway):

"However, the enzyme responsible for the catalysis of bisnoryangonin, i.e. styrylpyrone synthase has been partially purified from Equisetum arvense and demonstrated to be different from chalcone oder stilbene synthase. The enzyme also accepts with lower efficiency caffeoyl-CoA which leads to the formation of hispidin (hispidin) representing another styrylpyrone detected in this more primitive gametophyte [Beckert97]."

http://www.metacyc.org/META/NEW-IMAGE?type=PATHWAY&object=PWY-84

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248228709_Styrylpyrone_biosynthesis_in_Equisetum_arvense

Patrik

[Nathan McCorkle]

On Sun, Jun 21, 2015 at 5:43 AM, Cathal (Phone)
<cathal...@cathalgarvey.me> wrote:
> Woohoo, turns out P.stipticus' bioluminescence *is* a classical
> enzymatic-redox reaction after all, instead of some crazy lignin/ROS
> reaction! So, transferable *and* potentially improve-able/hackable.
>
> And because P.stipticus is a native EU species, is easy to cultivate, and
> could be cisgenically engineered, this would make a fun hacking project for
> a consortium of EU hackers...? :)
> http://phys.org/news/2015-06-fungi-green-chemical-basis-bioluminescence.htmlhttp://phys.org/news/2015-06-fungi-green-chemical-basis-bioluminescence.html

I think this is the main paper... but I can't tell if it is the final
version or not:
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/279068192_The_Chemical_Basis_of_Fungal_Bioluminescence

also there is supposed to be some supplementary material here, but it
is giving me a server error right now... maybe it will work tomorrow?
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.201501779/suppinfo