Capsaicin, produced by diverse Capsicum species is among the world’s most popular spices and of considerable pharmaceutical relevance. Although the capsaicinoid biosynthetic pathway has been investigated for decades, several biosynthetic steps have remained partly hypothetical. Genetic evidence suggested that the decisive capsaicin synthase is encoded by the Pun1 locus. Yet, genetic evidence of the Pun1 locus was never corroborated by functionally active capsaicin synthase that presumably catalyzes amide bond formation between trans 8-methyl-6-nonenoyl-CoA derived from branched chain amino acid biosynthesis and vanilloylamine derived from the phenylpropanoid pathway. In this report, we demonstrate enzymatic activity of a recombinant capsaicin synthase encoded by Pun1, functionally expressed in E. coli, and provide information on substrate specificity and catalytic properties. Recombinant capsaicin synthase is specific for selected aliphatic CoA-esters and highly specific for vanilloylamine. Partly purified from E. coli, the recombinant active enzyme is a monomeric protein of 51 kDa that is independent of additional co-factors or associated proteins, as previously proposed. These data can now be used to design capsaicin synthase variants with different properties and alternative substrate preferences.

Varian Mercury 400 NMR spectrometer (Agilent, Waldbronn, Germany)

AB Sciex API 3200, Q-TRAP mass spectrometer (AB Sciex , Darmstadt, Germany)

Waters e2695 chromatography work station equipped with a photodiode array detector (PDA) and a QDA-mass detector (Waters, Eschborn, Germany)

Äkta Explorer FPLC (Cytiva, Freiburg, Germany) Instrument

QExactive Plus mass spectrometer (Thermo Fisher Scientific, Dreieich, Germany)

Capsicum

Escherichia coli