Borneol and camphor degrading strain from Taiwan - a major natural camphor production island

What is it about?

It is reminiscent of the history that Taiwan was the major producer of natural camphor in the world one hundred years ago. The secondary metabolites of plant leaves are finally degraded by soil microorganisms. Borneol is a biosynthetic precursor of camphor in plant. Many camphor or borneol-degrading indigenous bacteria were isolated from Hualien area by our group.

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Why is it important?

Our results show that the kcat and kcat/Km values of plant BDH are about 1800-fold and 500-fold lower than those of TCU-HL1. For soil microbial BDH, its physiological role is to degrade borneol in order to provide an energy supply to keep cells alive. Microbial BDH with weak activity means that microbial cells cannot obtain energy very efficiently from borneol. However, plant BDH is responsible for the biosynthesis of the secondary metabolite, camphor. Generally speaking, secondary metabolites are not vitally essential for plant survival. Plant BDH with low catalytic activities can still synthesize and continue to accumulate camphor throughout the life of the plant. We present the interactions between plant and soil microorganisms through the properties of borneol dehydrogenase.