Tangerine Dreams
- 1 February 2002
- journal article
- editorial
- Published by Oxford University Press (OUP) in Plant Cell
- Vol. 14 (2) , 289-292
- https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.140210
Abstract
Carotenoids are long (mainly 40-carbon) isoprenoid chains that may be linear or cyclized at one or both ends of the molecule. The first committed step in carotenoid biosynthesis in plants and cyanobacteria is the production of the colorless compound phytoene via the condensation of two molecules of geranylgeranyl diphosphate by phytoene synthase. In photosynthetic organisms, phytoene desaturase (PDS) and ζ-carotene desaturase (ZDS) catalyze successive dehydrogenation reactions of phytoene to yield the colored molecules ζ-carotene and lycopene, respectively. In nonphotosynthetic (anoxygenic) bacteria, the desaturation of phytoene to lycopene is catalyzed by a single enzyme, bacterial phytoene desaturase (CrtI). The sequence of CrtI is unrelated to that of PDS or ZDS, suggesting that some of the steps in carotenoid biosynthesis arose independently in photosynthetic organisms (higher plants and cyanobacteria) and nonphotosynthetic bacteria (Hirschberg et al., 1997).Keywords
This publication has 12 references indexed in Scilit:
- Cloning of tangerine from Tomato Reveals a Carotenoid Isomerase Essential for the Production of β-Carotene and Xanthophylls in PlantsPlant Cell, 2002
- Identification of the Carotenoid Isomerase Provides Insight into Carotenoid Biosynthesis, Prolamellar Body Formation, and PhotomorphogenesisPlant Cell, 2002
- Improving plant breeding with exotic genetic librariesNature Reviews Genetics, 2001
- Improving plant breeding with exotic genetic librariesNature Reviews Genetics, 2001
- An alternative pathway to β-carotene formation in plant chromoplasts discovered by map-based cloning of Beta and old-gold color mutations in tomatoProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2000
- Arabidopsis carotenoid mutants demonstrate that lutein is not essential for photosynthesis in higher plants.Plant Cell, 1996
- A genomic library of Lycopersicon pennellii in L. esculentum: A tool for fine mapping of genesEuphytica, 1994
- Light-dependent switch from formation of poly-cis carotenes to all-trans carotenoids in the Scenedesmus mutant C-6DArchiv für Mikrobiologie, 1991
- PHOTOISOMERIZATION OF ζ‐CAROTENE STEREOISOMERS IN CELLS OF Euglena gracilis MUTANT W3BUL AND IN SOLUTION*Photochemistry and Photobiology, 1985
- Prolycopene, a Naturally Occuring Stereoisomer of LycopeneProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 1941