Redesigning Plant Phytoalexin Biosynthesis

Plants produce a wealth of biologically active compounds, and thus a major impetus for studying plant natural product biosynthesis has been the goal of elucidating and harnessing these metabolic pathways as a means to produce molecules of interest. The field of synthetic biology has opened the door not only to the engineering of new metabolisms into heterologous hosts, but also the designing of novel pathways that are not known to exist in nature. Here, we expand the biological repertoire of plant metabolism by taking a “plug-and-play” approach to rationally engineer synthetic pathways for the production of target non-natural compounds. We demonstrate that we can introduce enzymes from various organisms in order to produce a variety of previously undescribed phytoalexins, compounds involved in plant pathogen defense. Our engineered non-natural products display enhanced properties against known fungal pathogens, highlighting the potential in creating new biopesticides.