How Nature builds the pigments of life

Abstract

Vitamin B12 (1) is the anti-pernicious anaemia vitamin and the coenzyme form is used by several different enzymes to bring about remarkable rearrangements in living systems. The lecture will focus on the question “How is vitamin B12 biosynthesised”. A very brief historical survey of what had been achieved earlier will be followed by a full account of the latest exciting advances. One take-home message is that any chemist aiming to solve the biosynthesis of a complex natural product must embrace genetics, molecular biology and enzymology whilst the biologists need the complementary strengths of the most advanced chemistry. A second theme will be to demonstrate the power of experiments, based on multiple labelling of biosynthetically generated intermediates, for studying natural pathways. The lecture will describe research involving molecular biology, enzymology, synthesis, isotopic labelling and the full panoply of modern NMR techniques. © 1993 IUPAC