Patent ID: 7192751

Claim:
A method for synthesizing amorpha-4,11-diene in a host microorganism, the method comprising: culturing a transformed host microorganism in a suitable medium, wherein the microorganism is a prokaryote that does not normally synthesize isopentenyl pyrophosphate (IPP) via a mevalonate pathway, wherein the microorganism comprises one or more nucleic acids heterologous to the microorganism, wherein the one or more heterologous nucleic acids comprises nucleotide sequences that encode two or more mevalonate pathway enzymes, wherein said two or more mevalonate pathway enzymes comprises an enzyme that condenses two molecules of acetyl-CoA to acetoacetyl-CoA as the first step in the synthesis of IPP via the mevalonate pathway, and one or more additional mevalonate pathway enzymes selected from: (i) an enzyme that condenses acetoacetyl-CoA with acetyl-CoA to form HMG-CoA; (ii) an enzyme that converts HMG-CoA to mevalonate; (iii) an enzyme that phosphorylates mevalonate to mevalonate 5-phosphate; (iv) an enzyme that converts mevalonate 5-phosphate to mevalonate 5-pvrophosphate; and (v) an enzyme that converts mevalonate 5-pyrophosphate to isopentenyl pvrophosphate; (b) an enzyme that converts isopentenyl pyrophosphate to dimethylallyl pyrophosphate; (c) a farnesyl pyrophosphate synthase; and (d) amorpha-4,11-diene synthase, wherein said culturing provides for production of said enzymes, and wherein said production of said enzymes results in production of amorpha-4,11-diene.