MULTIFUNCTIONAL CAFFEIC ACID O-METHYLTRANSFERASE

摘要

The present invention is related to an isolated polypeptide capable of methylating an ortho-dihydroxy substituted ring system, whereby the ring system preferably is an aromatic, or heteroaromatic ring system or furanone based ring, and mimetics of said ortho-dihydroxy substituted ring system, selected from the group consisting of: (a) a polypeptide having an amino acid sequence which has at least 65% identity with amino acids 1 to 365 for the mature polypeptide of SEQ ID NO. 2; (b) a polypeptide which is encoded by a nucleic acid sequence which hybridizes under high stringency conditions with (i) the open reading frame coding for SEQ ID No 2 within the nucleotide sequence SEQ ID No. 1, (ii) a subsequence of (i) of at least 100 nucleotides, preferably of at least 100 consecutive nucleotides, or (iii) a complementary strand of (i), or (ii); (c) a polypeptide which is encoded by a nucleic acid having a nucleic acid sequence according to SEQ. ID. No. 1 or SEQ. ID. No. 3; (d) an allelic variant of (a), (b), or (c) and (e) a fragment of (a), (b), (c) or (d) that has methyltransferase activity using as a substrate an ortho-dihydroxy substituted ring system or a mimetic thereof.