ArticleNatural products and bioprospecting2026
De novo synthesis of plant polyketide plumbagin in yeast: a platform for sustainable production of naphthoquinones.
Article in Natural products and bioprospecting, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Plumbagin is a natural naphthoquinone with different pharmacological properties and abundantly present in the roots of Plumbago zeylanica L. In spite of its therapeutic anti-cancerous potential, its limited availability from plant sources has slowed down its large scale production. In the present study, we report the heterologous reconstruction of the complete plumbagin biosynthetic pathway in Saccharomyces cerevisiae using six functionally characterized genes from P. zeylanica viz. Polyketide synthase (PKS), Polyketide cyclase, Aldo-keto reductase (AKR1), two cytochrome P450 monooxygenases (CYP81B140 and CYP81B141), and a cytochrome P450 reductase (CPR). Stepwise pathway engineering was performed to evaluate the necessity and sufficiency of individual and combined gene sets. The expression of PKS alone was not able to synthesize measurable products, while the co-expression of PKS, cyclase, and AKR1 (PCA) enabled the biosynthesis of 3-methyl-1,8-naphthalenediol which is a key intermediate and also confirmed by LC-MS/MS. The addition of CYP81B140 and CPR (PCACC) led to the production of 3-methyl-1,8-naphthalenediol and isoshinanolone, and further addition of CYP81B141 (PCACCC) in yeast effectively biosynthesized plumbagin. These results confirm the functional roles of all six genes and demonstrate full pathway reconstruction in yeast from the primary precursors acetyl-CoA and malonyl-CoA. The present study establishes a microbial production platform for plumbagin and provides valuable insights into the biosynthesis of plant-derived naphthoquinones as well as paving the way for the sustainable and scalable production of medicinally important compounds.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.