10.3390/molecules21111443
The study focuses on the characterization of the O-methyltransferase enzyme JerF, which is involved in the late stages of jerangolid biosynthesis. JerF is unique for its ability to catalyze the formation of a non-aromatic, cyclic methylenolether, a reaction not previously characterized in other O-methyltransferases. The researchers successfully overexpressed JerF in E. coli and utilized cell-free extracts to conduct bioconversion experiments. They also chemically synthesized a range of substrate surrogates to evaluate JerF's catalytic activity and substrate tolerance. The results revealed that JerF has a broad substrate tolerance and high regioselectivity, making it a promising candidate for chemoenzymatic synthesis, particularly for the modification of natural products containing a 4-methoxy-5,6-dihydro-2H-pyran-2-one moiety. The study also highlighted the potential of JerF in introducing specific methylation patterns and its use in biorthogonal coupling reactions, such as click chemistry, for site-specific labeling of biomolecules like DNA, RNA, or proteins.