Catalytic Functions of the Isoprenyl Diphosphate Synthase Superfamily in Plants: A Growing Repertoire

Abstract

The discovery of artemisinin as an antimalarial agent by Professor Youyou Tu of China was awarded the Noble prize in Physiology and Medicine in 2015. Notably, artemisinin belongs to the terpenoids; more than 55 000 of them have been isolated from nature. Important for both cellular and ecological functions (Gershenzon and Dudareva, 2007), terpenoids are particularly rich in plants. It has been a long-standing question to chemists and biologists alike: how are enormously diverse terpenoids made by plants? One current understanding is that terpene synthases, which convert isoprenyl diphosphates to terpene skeletons, play a central role in generating structural diversity of terpenoids (Chen et al., 2011).