Manman Li

Hainan Institute of Tropical Agricultural Resources, Sanya, 572024, China
Author    Correspondence author
Biological Evidence, 2024, Vol. 14, No. 2   
Received: 03 Jan., 2024    Accepted: 05 Feb., 2024    Published: 17 Feb., 2024

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

The paper titled "Role of Plant Carbonic Anhydrase-Like Enzymes in Neuroactive Alkaloid Biosynthesis" published in the journal Nature on November 8, 2023, by authors Ryan S. Nett, Yaereen Dho, Chun Tsai, among others, from the Department of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University, etc. This study focuses on a class of plant carbonic anhydrase-like enzymes (CALs) that play a key role in the biosynthesis of neuroactive alkaloids in gymnosperms. Through in-depth analysis of the biosynthetic pathways in ferns, the research team revealed how these CAL proteins participate in the generation of neuroactive gymnosperm alkaloids, such as huperzine A, through a series of complex enzyme-catalyzed reactions. This work not only expands our understanding of plant-specific metabolic pathways but also provides a new perspective for the future discovery and development of plant alkaloid-based medications.

Carbonic; Neuroactive; Biosynthesis