ArticlePlant molecular biology2012
The first step in the biosynthesis of cocaine in Erythroxylum coca: the characterization of arginine and ornithine decarboxylases.
Article in Plant molecular biology, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 38 papers.
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38 citing papers in PubMed, 105 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Plant Peroxisomal Polyamine Oxidase: A Ubiquitous Enzyme Involved in Abiotic Stress Tolerance.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- Understanding how plants produce cocaine.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Defence-related metabolic changes in wheat (Frontiers in plant science · 2023Article
- Elucidation of tropane alkaloid biosynthesis inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Comparison of Genome and Plasmid-Based Engineering of Multigene Benzylglucosinolate Pathway in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2022Article
- Arginine-Dependent Nitric Oxide Generation and S-Nitrosation in the Non-Photosynthetic Unicellular AlgaAntioxidants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Advances in chemistry and bioactivity of the genus Erythroxylum.Natural products and bioprospecting · 2022Review
- Putrescine: A Key Metabolite Involved in Plant Development, Tolerance and Resistance Responses to Stress.International journal of molecular sciences · 2022Review
- Exploiting photosynthesis-driven P450 activity to produce indican in tobacco chloroplasts.Frontiers in plant science · 2022Article
- Soil chemistry determines whether defensive plant secondary metabolites promote or suppress herbivore growth.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- So Much for Glucosinolates: A Generalist Does Survive and Develop on Brassicas, but at What Cost?Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Strategies to Modulate Specialized Metabolism in Mediterranean Crops: From Molecular Aspects to Field.International journal of molecular sciences · 2021Review
- Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization-Mass Spectrometry Imaging of Metabolites during Sorghum Germination.Plant physiology · 2020Article
- Erythroxylum in Focus: An Interdisciplinary Review of an Overlooked Genus.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2019Review
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Despite the long history of cocaine use among humans and its social and economic significance today, little information is available about the biochemical and molecular aspects of cocaine biosynthesis in coca (Erythroxylum coca) in comparison to what is known about the formation of other pharmacologically-important tropane alkaloids in species of the Solanaceae. In this work, we investigated the site of cocaine biosynthesis in E. coca and the nature of the first step. The two principal tropane alkaloids of E. coca, cocaine and cinnamoyl cocaine, were present in highest concentrations in buds and rolled leaves. These are also the organs in which the rate of alkaloid biosynthesis was the highest based on the incorporation of ¹³CO₂. In contrast, tropane alkaloids in the Solanaceae are biosynthesized in the roots and translocated to the leaves. A collection of EST sequences from a cDNA library made from young E. coca leaves was employed to search for genes encoding the first step in tropane alkaloid biosynthesis. Full-length cDNA clones were identified encoding two candidate enzymes, ornithine decarboxylase (ODC) and arginine decarboxylase (ADC), and the enzymatic activities of the corresponding proteins confirmed by heterologous expression in E. coli and complementation of a yeast mutant. The transcript levels of both ODC and ADC genes were highest in buds and rolled leaves and lower in other organs. The levels of both ornithine and arginine themselves showed a similar pattern, so it was not possible to assign a preferential role in cocaine biosynthesis to one of these proteins.
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