S79: The ABBA tune: Tailoring aromatic natural products in a PT-barrel

Hybrid isoprenoids constitute an extremely rich group of natural products mainly produced by the secondary metabolism of eukaryotes, particularly plants. There is increased interest in understanding how these chemicals are synthesized in nature due to their attractive biological properties, ranging from antibiotic to anticarcinogenic, antimalarial or insecticide. It is known that during their biosynthesis, an isoprenoid moiety is delivered to an electron rich intermediate by an aromatic prenyltransferase (PTase) enzyme, which can be later cyclized or oxydized to generate a complex variety of compounds. Active research in this field recently lead to the discovery of a structurally novel group of enzymes, the ABBA PTases, a family of soluble aromatic PTases. We will here present a structural view of the ABBA family of aromatic PTases.