New insights into the function of plant tannase with promiscuous acyltransferase activity.

Plant tannases (TAs) or tannin acyl hydrolases, a class of recently reported carboxylesterase (CXE) in tannin-rich plants, are involved in the degalloylation of two important secondary metabolites: flavan-3-ol gallates and hydrolyzable tannins (HTs). In this paper, we have made a new progress on the function of Camellia sinensis (Cs) TA-it is a hydrolase with promiscuous acyltransferase activity in vitro and in vivo experiments and promotes the synthesis of simple galloyl glucoses and flavan-3-ols gallates in plants. We gained the new understanding to the functions of CsTA through enzyme analysis, protein mass spectrometry identification, metabolic analysis of plants by genetic modification. Firstly, CsTA was proved that it is not only a hydrolase but also an acyltransferase. In the two-step covalent catalytic reaction, when CsTA hydrolyzes the galloylated compounds epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) or 1,2,3,4,6-penta-O-galloyl-β-D-glucose (PGG) into their degalloylated forms, a long-lived Ser159-linked galloyl-enzyme covalent intermediate is also formed. Under nucleophilic attack, the galloyl group on the intermediate is transferred to the nucleophilic acyl acceptors (including water, methanol, flavan-3-ols and simple galloyl glucoses). Then, metabolic analysis suggested that transiently overexpression of TAs in young strawberry fruits, young leaves of tea plants and young leaves of Chinese bayberry actually increased the total content of simple galloyl glucoses and flavan-3-ol gallates. Overall, these findings provide new insights into the promiscuous acyltransferase activity of plant tannase.