Discovery of an isoflavone biosynthetic pathway in Iridaceae plants
Yucheng Zhao, Xinyu Shi, Xiang Zhang, Ming-Ju Amy Lyu, Mei Tian, Shuai Li, Lanlan Sun, Yixuan Zhong, Yiqun Dai, Huihui Zeng, Yan Zhu, Guoyong Xie, Jianfang Bai, Xiaojing Ma, Lian-Wen Qi, Minjian Qin · 2026
Read Discovery of an isoflavone biosynthetic pathway in Iridaceae plants by Yucheng Zhao, Xinyu Shi, Xiang Zhang, Ming-Ju Amy Lyu, Mei Tian, Shuai Li, Lanlan Sun, Yixuan Zhong, Yiqun Dai, Huihui Zeng, Yan Zhu, Guoyong Xie, Jianfang Bai, Xiaojing Ma, Lian-Wen Qi, Minjian Qin (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13454174.txt.
Description
Yucheng Zhao and fifteen co-authors uncover the full recipe that iris family plants use to build isoflavones, prized plant compounds with drug like effects. That recipe was well mapped in beans and their kin, yet a mystery in other families. Their 2026 study finds the iris route runs on an uncharted enzyme family member as its synthase, plus a hydroxylase that is not of the usual class.
Two further enzymes add methyl groups, and a newly found family member adds the final hydroxyl touch. Family tree analysis suggests the iris path is ancient and widely conserved, perhaps the original route in land plants. Soybean, by contrast, runs a specialized path found only in its own family. The find closes a long gap and shows two plant lines solved the same chemistry in their own ways.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Yucheng Zhao, Xinyu Shi, Xiang Zhang, Ming-Ju Amy Lyu, Mei Tian, Shuai Li, Lanlan Sun, Yixuan Zhong, Yiqun Dai, Huihui Zeng, Yan Zhu, Guoyong Xie, Jianfang Bai, Xiaojing Ma, Lian-Wen Qi, Minjian Qin |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 56941 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |