De Novo Biosynthesis of Multiple Pinocembrin Derivatives in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Pinocembrin derived flavones are the major bioactive compounds presented in the Lamiaceae plants that have long been of interest due to their great pharmaceutical and economical significance. Modifications on the central skeleton of the flavone moiety have a huge impact on their biological activities. However, the enzymes responsible for structure modification of most flavones are either inefficient or remain unidentified. By integrating omics analysis of Scutellaria barbata and synthetic biology tools in yeast chassis, we characterized a novel gene encoding flavone 7-O-methyltransferase (F7OMT) and discovered a new flavone 8-hydroxylase (F8H) with increased activity. We also identified a series of flavone 6-hydroxylases (F6Hs) and flavone 8-O-methyltransferases (F8OMTs) in this study. Subsequently, we constructed the biosynthetic pathway for chrysin production by assembling catalytic elements from different species and improved the titer to 10.06 mg/L. Using the established chrysin production platform, we achieved the de novo biosynthesis of baicalein, baicalin, norwogonin, wogonin, isowogonin, and moslosooflavone in yeast. Our results indicated that the combination of omics and synthetic biology can greatly speed up the efficiency of gene mining in plants and the engineered yeasts established an alternative way for the production of pinocembrin derivatives.