Flavone Synthase II (CYP93B) of Antarctic Plant Colobanthus quitensis (Kunth) Bartl.

Abstract

The role of flavonoids in plant-environmental stress has many biotechnological applications, in this way Antarctic plants have an important potential for molecular farming. However, the concentration and exploitation of resource are highly restricted, for this reason the use of enzymatic machinery of the Antarctic plants have importance for in vitro flavonoid production for different biotechnological applications. Despite their potential applications, key enzymes for flavonoid biosynthesis are poorly studied in non-model plants. In this work, we studied the flavonoid key enzyme, flavone synthase II (FNS II) in C. quitensis. The results show a cooperative kinetic model for NADPH and naringenin. The temperature and pH stability assays show optimal temperature between 20-30 °C, with an operative range from 2 to 37 °C, pH stability shows an optimum of 7.0 to 8.0, with operative range from 3.0 to 8.0, demonstrating a big thermal and pH-stability, an interesting characteristic to in vitro production of flavones.