A. Poulev et al., REGIOSELECTIVE BIOCONVERSION OF COLCHICINE AND THIOCOLCHICINE INTO THEIR CORRESPONDING 3-DEMETHYL DERIVATIVES, Journal of fermentation and bioengineering, 79(1), 1995, pp. 33-38
A variety of plant cell cultures and microbial soil isolates were scre
ened for their ability to specifically demethylate colchicine at the C
-3 position. Among all plant cell cultures tested, the newly establish
ed Colchicum variegatum culture was the only one able to demethylate c
olchicine, however unspecifically, yielding a mixture of 3-demethylcol
chicine and 2-demethylcolchicine. In contrast, two bacterial strains w
ere found among more than 500 isolates tested which expressed highly r
egio-specific demethylation activity exclusively at C-3 of colchicine,
The bioconversion product of the microorganisms, 3-demethylcolchicine
, was completely excreted into the medium. The specific C-3 bioconvers
ion of colchicine as well as of thiocolchicine by one of these strains
, Bacillus IND-B 375, was characterized in function of substrate conce
ntration and incubation time.