Talk:Part:BBa K343001

Beta-carotene dioxygenase

β,β-carotene-15,15′-dioxygenase is an enzyme that cleaves beta-carotene into two retinal, via the following reaction: Beta-carotene + O(2) <=> 2 retinal (1).

Beta-carotene dioxygenase plays an important role in animal vision, as retinal forms the chemical basis for vision in animals (2). Animals cannot synthesize retinal de novo and thus relies on beta-carotene dioxygenase to transform carotenoids (beta-carotene, alpha-carotene, gamma-carotene, and beta-cryptoxanthin) into retinal (3). Retinal also allows certain microorganisms to convert light into metabolic energy.

Here we present a biobrick containing this enzyme, and show that it produces retinal both when beta-caroton directly to the bacteria or in bacteria with the Cambridge 2009 BBa_K274210 (CrtEBIY under constitutive promoter) BioBrick (4) which produces beta-caroten in vivo.

Litterature

1. http://www.expasy.org/cgi-bin/nicezyme.pl?1.14.99.36 2. http://www.pnas.org/content/98/3/1130.full 3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retinal 4. https://parts.igem.org/Part:BBa_K274210