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Biosynthesis of Plant Volatiles: Nature's Diversity and Ingenuity
Eran Pichersky,1*Joseph P. Noel,2Natalia Dudareva3
Plant volatiles (PVs) are lipophilic molecules with high vaporpressure that serve various ecological roles. The synthesisof PVs involves the removal of hydrophilic moieties and oxidation/hydroxylation,reduction, methylation, and acylation reactions. Some PV biosyntheticenzymes produce multiple products from a single substrate oract on multiple substrates. Genes for PV biosynthesis evolveby duplication of genes that direct other aspects of plant metabolism;these duplicated genes then diverge from each other over time.Changes in the preferred substrate or resultant product of PVenzymes may occur through minimal changes of critical residues.Convergent evolution is often responsible for the ability ofdistally related species to synthesize the same volatile.
1 Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, University of Michigan, 830 North University Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA. 2 Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Jack H. Skirball Center for Chemical Biology and Proteomics, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, 10010 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA. 3 Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: lelx{at}umich.edu
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