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Record W4411992534 · doi:10.1016/j.bej.2025.109853

Chalcone isomerase-like (CHIL) impedes the lactone shunt and modulates flux partitioning in isoflavonoid biosynthesis

2025· article· en· W4411992534 on OpenAlex
Lee Marie Raytek, Meha Sharma, Soon Goo Lee, Mehran Dastmalchi

Why this work is in the frame

A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.

affAt least one author lists a Canadian institution in the pinned OpenAlex snapshot.
fundA Canadian funder is recorded on the work.

Bibliographic record

VenueBiochemical Engineering Journal · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldBiochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
TopicPlant Gene Expression Analysis
Canadian institutionsMcGill University
FundersUniversity of New BrunswickAgriculture and Agri-Food CanadaNatural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of CanadaMcGill University
KeywordsIsoflavonoidChalconeChalcone isomeraseBiosynthesisChemistryFlux (metallurgy)BiochemistryChalcone synthaseStereochemistryEnzymeFlavonoidOrganic chemistry

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

ABSTRACT The reconstitution of biosynthetic pathways in heterologous hosts is often challenged by the transition to a foreign cellular environment, lacking compatible structural or regulatory features. Auxiliary or non-catalytic proteins can play a critical role in guiding metabolic flux. Chalcone isomerase-like (CHIL) is a non-catalytic protein known to serve as a partner to chalcone synthase (CHS) in flavonoid biosynthesis, rectifying its promiscuous activity and preventing the formation of by-products, such as p -coumaroyltriacetic acid lactone (CTAL). Here, we extended the functional analysis of CHILs to the legume-characteristic isoflavonoid pathway. We assessed CHIL orthologs, using sequence analysis and structural modelling to predict their respective binding capacities, followed by in vitro characterization. The addition of CHIL to enzyme assays containing CHS, alone or with downstream enzymes, chalcone reductase (CHR) and chalcone isomerase (CHI), reduced CTAL levels (up to 42%) while simultaneously increasing the output of desired intermediates. Combinatorial yeast biotransformation assays described a critical role for CHIL in conducting flux through chalcone, flavanone, and isoflavone biosynthesis. The inclusion of CHIL in engineered yeast strains enhanced overall titers and, unexpectedly, promoted partitioning toward the deoxy-branch (isoliquiritigenin, liquiritigenin, and daidzein) up to 67%, with a 33% increase in final daidzein titers. Therefore, we have revealed an expanded role for CHIL as an auxiliary protein in isoflavonoid biosynthesis and underscored the utility of non-catalytic proteins in metabolic engineering.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Bench or experimental · Consensus signal: Bench or experimental
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.009
Threshold uncertainty score0.503

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.003
GPT teacher head0.208
Teacher spread0.204 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it