2022

This updated version should ease evolutionary studies leading to a better understanding of MIA biosynthetic pathway evolution.

Read our new study with Pr Chao SUN’s group, on single-cell RNA sequencing of Catharanthus roseus leaf published in Nature plants!

A collaborative article with the laboratory Synthese et Isolement de Molecules Bioactives (SIMBA), Tours.We validated the traditional application of C. sieberiana root bark as a dewormer. We determined the metabolic composition of the extracts by UPLC-MS/MS.

Published in Nature Plants, this review focuses on translational, transcriptional, epigenetic and chromatin-based regulation and evolution of specialized metabolism genes, a new and forefront research filed. We extrapolate to medicinal plants that synthetize rare molecules and also discuss how this new knowledge could help in improving strategies to produce useful plant-derived pharmaceuticals.

A collaborative paper which describes the HOG-mediated stress adaptation, with a particular focus on osmotic and oxidative stress, and point out some lags in our understanding of its involvement in the virulence of pathogenic species including, the medically important fungi Candida albicans, Cryptococcus neoformans, and Aspergillus fumigatus, compared to the model yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Through this commentary article, we highlight the outstanding work of the Zhou’s group which recently describes a distinct approach relying on the efficient recycling of enzyme co-factors in yeast to fulfill the synthesis of caffeic acid (CaA) and ferulic acid (FA), two precursors of podophyllotoxin. We discuss how the cofactor recycling approach will undoubtedly pave the way for future high titer production of valuable natural products in yeast.

In our new article published in Genome Biology and Evolution, we provide the first annotated reference genome of a Voacanga species that, together with the previously published MIA-producing plant genomes, will help understand evolution and diversification of MIA in plants as well as identifying MIA biosynthetic genes to enrich the molecular MIA toolbox used for production of MIA in heterologous hosts.

The Vinca minor genome finally assembled! Our new publication in G3!The Vinca minor plant synthesizes monoterpene indole alkaloids (MIAs), which are a class of specialized metabolites displaying a wide range of bioactive- and pharmacologically important properties. V. minor mainly accumulates vincamine, which is commercially used as a nootropic. Using a combination of Oxford Nanopore Technologies long read- and Illumina short-read sequencing, a 679,098 Mb V. minor genome was assembled into 296 scaffolds with an N50 scaffold length of 6 Mb, and encoding 29,624 genes.

Our new highlight in ChemSusChem!

The authors engineered yeast to produce the cancer therapeutic vinblastine. A promising achievement for the synthetis of therapeutic natural products. This is the latest research of several teams including MIAMi project collaborators. Dr Vincent Courdavault , assistant professor in our lab and Emily A. Stander, former post-doctoral researcher are co-authors of this paper published in Nature.

We identified a second isoform of 16-hydroxytabersonine-O-methyltransferase enzyme that suggests an evolutionary relationship between alkaloid and flavonoid metabolisms in the Madagascar Periwinkle, a plant producing anti-cancer drugs - our new article in Protoplasma!

Our spotlight on the work of Tao and colleagues that discovered a new pathway for triterpene biosynthesis in which bifunctional class I terpene synthases from fungi catalyze both the synthesis of HexPP and its cyclization via their prenyltransferase (PTd) and terpene cyclase (TCd) domains.

In this article published in Molecules, we identified the main drivers of antioxidant activities in polyphenol-rich grape cane extracts in European varieties. Congrats to our PhD student Manon Ferrier for this article!

Read our collaborative article with Pr Kosteridis from University of Athens (Greece).Biostimulants have emerged as innovative technical solutions to synthetic chemicals, providing sustainable alternative for grapevine protection. We evaluated the impact on a polyphenol metabolism in a local Greek cultivar.

We discuss in this Highlight article the importance of continuing to acquire new data on biosynthetic pathways in marine organisms for both diagnostic and metabolic-engineering purposes.

Spotlight on our model plant, the Madagascar periwinkle : much more than a plant, an alkaloid factory! A review in Current Opinion Plant Biology.

Impact of Deficit Irrigation on Grapevine cv. ‘Touriga Nacional’ during Three Seasons in Douro Region: An Agronomical and Metabolomics Approach , a collaborative article with Pr Geros from the University do Minho, (Portugal)

Social amoebae as a new chassis for drug production : our new spotlight published in Trends in Biotechnology

Recent chromosome-scale genomes from prominent medicinal plants have provided unprecedent insight into the architecture and evolution of some prominent metabolic pathways. A story related in our new paper published in Trends in Pharmacological Sciences!

In this Chapter of the "Catharanthus roseus, Methods and Protocols" book, we describe bioinformatic protocols for exploiting such coexpression to shortlist candidate genes of the well-described monoterpene indole alkaloid (MIA) pathway of Catharanthus roseus.

In this Chapter of the "Catharanthus roseus, Methods and Protocols" book, we provide a step-by-step protocol describing every details allowing to reach a medium throughput including riboprobe synthesis, paraffin-embedded plant tissue array preparation, prehybridization, in situ hybridization, stringent washing and immunodetection of hybridized probes, and imaging steps.

In this Chapter of the "Catharanthus roseus, Methods and Protocols" book, using Catharanthus roseus as an example, we show that ANN trained on a minimal set of bait genes results in many true positives (correctly predicted genes) while keeping false positives low (containing possible candidate genes).

In this Chapter of the "Catharanthus roseus, Methods and Protocols" book, we provide a reliable transformation protocol based on an efficient electroporation procedure and the use of a mycophenolic acid resistance marker.

In this Chapter of the "Catharanthus roseus, Methods and Protocols" book, we describe a protocol that combines a vacuum-based Agroinfiltration approach and the high translational efficiency of a deconstructed virus-based binary vector (pEAQ-HT). The described methodology is robust, easy to perform, and results in high amount of transient expression in C. roseus. This protocol is expected to serve as valuable tool to enhance the in planta characterization of gene functions or even transiently knock-in novel enzymatic activities.

In this Chapter of the "Catharanthus roseus, Methods and Protocols" book, we describe bioinformatic protocols for exploiting such coexpression to shortlist candidate genes of the well-described monoterpene indole alkaloid (MIA) pathway of Catharanthus roseus.

Do you know that marine organisms represent a huge reservoir of new pharmaceuticals? If you are interested, read our new research review paper published in Biotechnology advances!