ArticleThe Plant cell2023
An unexpected hydratase synthesizes the green light-absorbing pigment fucoxanthin.
Article in The Plant cell, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed.
- Fucoxanthin Bioproduction from Marine Diatoms: Regulatory Strategies and Industrial Potential ofMarine drugs · 2026Review
- An acetyltransferase family required for biosynthesis of diverse marine carotenoids.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Characterization of fucoxanthin-deficient strains in the haptophyte Tisochrysis lutea induced by heavy-ion beam irradiation.Plant & cell physiology · 2026Article
- Review
- Some Bioactive Natural Products from Diatoms: Structures, Biosyntheses, Biological Roles, and Properties: 2015-2025.Marine drugs · 2026Review
- Installing a Ketocarotenoid Branch inMarine drugs · 2025Article
- Structure Meets Function: Dissecting Fucoxanthin's Bioactive Architecture.Marine drugs · 2025Review
- The marine diatom Phaeodactylum tricornutum as a versatile bioproduction chassis: Current progress, challenges, and perspectives.Plant communications · 2025Review
- Both major xanthophyll cycles present in nature promote nonphotochemical quenching in a model diatom.Plant physiology · 2025Article
- Boosting energy metabolism and biosynthesis in diverse organisms by a common bacterial salvage lipoylation protein.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Metabolic engineering of Saccharomyces cerevisiae for neoxanthin production.Microbial cell factories · 2025Article
- Metabolic engineering and cultivation strategies for efficient production of fucoxanthin and related carotenoids.Applied microbiology and biotechnology · 2025Review
- Distribution, Biosynthesis, and Function of Carotenoids in Oxygenic Phototrophic Algae.Marine drugs · 2025Review
- Identifying the gene responsible for non-photochemical quenching reversal in Phaeodactylum tricornutum.The Plant journal : for cell and molecular biology · 2024Article
- Unlocking the Green Gold: Exploring the Cancer Treatment and the Other Therapeutic Potential of Fucoxanthin Derivatives from Microalgae.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- The role ofApplied and environmental microbiology · 2024Article
- Article
- A key gene, violaxanthin de-epoxidase-like 1, enhances fucoxanthin accumulation in Phaeodactylum tricornutum.Biotechnology for biofuels and bioproducts · 2024Article
- Overexpression of PtVDL1 inJournal of microbiology and biotechnology · 2024Article
- Brown is the new green: Discovery of an algal enzyme for the final step of fucoxanthin biosynthesis.The Plant cell · 2023Article
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20 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The ketocarotenoid fucoxanthin and its derivatives can absorb blue-green light enriched in marine environments. Fucoxanthin is widely adopted by phytoplankton species as a main light-harvesting pigment, in contrast to land plants that primarily employ chlorophylls. Despite its supreme abundance in the oceans, the last steps of fucoxanthin biosynthesis have remained elusive. Here, we identified the carotenoid isomerase-like protein CRTISO5 as the diatom fucoxanthin synthase that is related to the carotenoid cis-trans isomerase CRTISO from land plants but harbors unexpected enzymatic activity. A crtiso5 knockout mutant in the model diatom Phaeodactylum tricornutum completely lacked fucoxanthin and accumulated the acetylenic carotenoid phaneroxanthin. Recombinant CRTISO5 converted phaneroxanthin into fucoxanthin in vitro by hydrating its carbon-carbon triple bond, instead of functioning as an isomerase. Molecular docking and mutational analyses revealed residues essential for this activity. Furthermore, a photophysiological characterization of the crtiso5 mutant revealed a major structural and functional role of fucoxanthin in photosynthetic pigment-protein complexes of diatoms. As CRTISO5 hydrates an internal alkyne physiologically, the enzyme has unique potential for biocatalytic applications. The discovery of CRTISO5 illustrates how neofunctionalization leads to major diversification events in evolution of photosynthetic mechanisms and the prominent brown coloration of most marine photosynthetic eukaryotes.
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