biologia plantarum

International journal on Plant Life established by Bohumil Nìmec in 1959

Biologia plantarum 64:314-319, 2020 | DOI: 10.32615/bp.2020.008

Cloning and functional characterization of the β-amyrin synthase genefrom Bupleurum chinense

J.-C. LI1, C. WANG1, W.-T. QI1, C.-L. LIU1,2,*
1 School of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Capital Medical University, Beijing, 100069, P.R. China
2 Beijing Key Laboratory of TCM Collateral Disease Theory Research, Beijing, 100069, P.R. China

Bupleurum chinense DC., a source of the traditional Chinese medicine Bupleuri Radix, is rich in triterpenoid saikosaponins with high pharmacological activities. The enzyme β-amyrin synthase (BAS), which converts the precursor 2,3-oxidosqualene to produce the triterpene skeleton, is crucial for the biosynthesis of triterpenoid saponins. In this study, we cloned the full-length sequence of the BAS gene from B. chinense, conducted a bioinformatics analysis, and expressed it in Saccharomyces cerevisiae to investigate its function. The cDNA of β-amyrin synthase (BcBAS, GenBank accession number: MN186093) cloned from aseptic seedlings of B. chinense was 2 307 bp with a 2 286 bp open reading frame coding for 761 amino acids. Phylogenetic analysis suggests that the BcBAS protein was closely related to the BAS proteins from Panax ginseng and Betula platyphylla. as chromatography mass spectrometry analysis showed that the enzymatic product was indeed β-amyrin, the precursor of oleanane type triterpenes. Overall, our findings lay the foundation for in-depth analysis of the biosynthesis pathway of saikosaponins.

Keywords: Saccharomyces cerevisiae, saikosaponins.

Received: August 13, 2019; Revised: December 25, 2019; Accepted: January 17, 2020; Published online: April 16, 2020  Show citation

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LI, J.-C., WANG, C., QI, W.-T., & LIU, C.-L. (2020). Cloning and functional characterization of the β-amyrin synthase genefrom Bupleurum chinense. Biologia plantarum, 64, Article 314-319. https://doi.org/10.32615/bp.2020.008
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