A paper published in Nature Chemical Biology is the culmination of more than 10 years of research, for a team led by Dr Ivo Tews of Southampton University, into the structure of proteins involved in the biosynthesis of vitamin B6 in plants and bacteria. Pyridoxal 5′-phosphate (PLP) is an active form of vitamin B6; the PLP-synthase complex, which consists of the enzymes Pdx1 and Pdx2, is found in all domains of life. The published work focuses on a Pdx1 enzyme from Arabidopsis thaliana, and furthers our understanding of how the protein catalyses the synthesis of vitamin B6. X-ray crystallography and spectroscopy allowed the discovery of previously unknown intermediate stages of the process, which offers up a new target for drugs designed to combat diseases such as malaria and TB by affecting the synthesis of a vitamin that is essential for all organisms.
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