Lignin and Lignan Biosynthesis

Abstract

Before 1996, the framework within which lignin biosynthesis was understood at the molecular level had not fundamentally changed for 4 decades. During the same period nothing at all had been explicitly proposed about the mechanistic basis for lignan formation in vivo. The associated deficit in plant biochemistry was not minor: lignins and lignans together account for roughly 30% of the organic carbon in vascular plants. On the other hand, the biochemical transformations in phenylpropanoid metabolism leading, via the shikimate-chorismate pathway through phenylalanine or tyrosine, to the so-called monolignols (namely, the monomeric lignin/lignan precursors) came to be reasonably well documented. Indeed, attention has more recently been drawn to the identification of de facto rate-limiting steps in the various metabolic segments of the pathway as potential control-points for biotechnological manipulation. The most curious characteristic usually attributed to the lignin/lignan biosynthetic pathway is that the monolignol-derived radical coupling processes leading to lignans are regio- and stereospecific, whereas those resulting in lignin macromolecules ostensibly are not. Now that the molecular basis for the dehydrogenative dimerization of monolignols to lignans has been unraveled, however, it appears likely that an analogous mechanism may be operative in the dehydrogenative polymerization of monolignols to lignins. The investigation of this possibility has indeed become a central concern in the field of lignin biosynthesis.