Résumé
On the basis of bioinformatic analysis of 137 putative and characterized bacterial terpene synthases (TS), we applied ancestral reconstruction strategy to design a biosynthetic protein sequence (AncCL1). We biochemically confirmed its catalytic competence and product profile. This enzyme catalyzes not only epi-isozizaene (minor product) but also epi-zizaene (major product) formation. We compared AncCL1 with two related TS to allow a more detailed insight into the product specificity determinants. In the future, the presented method will be useful for engineering biosynthetic TS and to elucidate the function of unknown enzymes.