Assembly of Dynamic P450-Mediated Metabolons-Order Versus Chaos

We provide an overview of the current knowledge on cytochrome P450-mediated metabolism organized as metabolons and factors that facilitate their stabilization. Essential parameters will be discussed including those that are commonly disregarded using the dhurrin metabolon from Sorghum bicolor as a case study.

Sessile plants control their metabolism to prioritize their resources between growth and development, or defense. This requires fine-tuned complex dynamic regulation of the metabolic networks involved. Within the recent years, numerous studies point to the formation of dynamic metabolons playing a major role in controlling the metabolic fluxes within such networks.

We propose that P450s and their partners interact and associate dynamically with POR, which acts as a charging station possibly in concert with Cytb5. Solvent environment, lipid composition, and non-catalytic proteins guide metabolon formation and thereby activity, which have important implications for synthetic biology approaches aiming to produce high-value specialized metabolites in heterologous hosts.