Diversity and impact of 2-oxoglutarate dependent dioxygenases in plant metabolism.

A plethora of 2-oxoglutarate dependent dioxygensases (2-ODDs) is known from bacteria, fungi, plants or vertebrates, which catalyze wide variety reactions in metabolism including aliphatic hydroxylation, epoxidation, desaturation and desaturating cyclization, respectively. Most of these enzymes are involved in biosynthetic processes leading to collagen or other modified polypeptides and amino acids, alkaloids, ethylene, gibberellins and ß-lactam antibiotics. Accordingly, studies on these dioxygenases were inspired by the medicinal and industrial relevance and focused initially on the architecture and mode of action of microbial and human 2-ODDs, but in recent years considerable insight has also been achieved into the functional organisation of plant 2-ODDs. A single plant may express numerous putative 2-ODDs, as was revealed by sequence analysis of the Arabidopsis thaliana genome coming up with about 100 isogenes. Major pathways involving one or more 2-ODDS are flavonoid, gibberellin, alkaloid, and ethylene biosynthesis.
This research topics welcomes manuscripts dealing with plant 2-ODDs involved in complex primary and secondary metabolism. Contributions on fundamental and applied topics of molecular cloning and functional characterisation, biochemistry, protein structure, catalytical properties, reaction mechanisms, genomics, transcriptomics, diversification and evolution and genetic engineering in different biological systems are welcome.