Terpene synthases are widely distributed in bacteria

Significance Terpenes are generally considered to be plant or fungal metabolites, although a small number of odoriferous terpenes of bacterial origin have been known for many years. Recently, extensive bacterial genome sequencing and bioinformatic analysis of deduced bacterial proteins using a profile based on a hidden Markov model have revealed 262 distinct predicted terpene synthases. Although many of these presumptive terpene synthase genes...