Hydroxynitrile lyases discovery in the trancriptome of the fern Pteridium aquilinum. PAHNL

Hydroxynitrile lyases (HNLs) are enzymes that all catalyze the addition of cyanide to a carbonyl substrate, but they are highly diverse in sequence and structure. In spite of being key enzymes of plant defense strategies and their industrial importance, only a small number of HNL sequences has been published so far. The discovery of new representatives is challenging and classical homology approaches fail to discover sequences of truly novel enzymes. We enlightened the amino acid sequence of novel HNLs from the fern Pteridium aquilinum by squencing its transcriptome and combining it with activity-based proteomics.