The impact of structural biology on alkaloid biosynthesis research.

In the recent past, macromolecular crystallography has gone through substantial methodological and technological development. The purpose of this review is to provide a general overview of structural biology and its impact on enzyme structure/function analysis and illustrate how it is modifying the focus of research relevant to alkaloid biosynthesis.

High speed X-ray analysis of plant enzymes at room temperature.

X-ray measurements at room temperature (295 K) deliver high quality data sets with unprecedented speed (<2 min), as shown for crystallized raucaffricine-O-β-D-glucosidase (RG), its mutant RG-Glu186Gln and several ligand complexes of the enzyme which participates in alkaloid biosynthesis in the plant Rauvolfia. The data obtained are compared with data sets measured under typical cryo conditions (100K). Under both conditions, density maps are highly comparable and favor the described protocol for room temperature measurements, potentially paving the way for future crystallographic studies capturing biosynthetic pathway intermediates.