Our new Natural Product Report Viewpoint is out! It explores why SAM is not just SAM: beyond the canonical diastereomer, non-canonical forms exist; and many SAM-enzymes surprisingly tolerate them. What does this mean for enzyme evolution & biosynthesis? doi.org/10.1039/d6np...

Greetings from our Summer School in Cologne Three days of science, exchange & inspiration. Including a visit to Bayer AG. Grateful for the connections made and conversations had across our research groups. Already looking forward to the next one!

Our new ChemBioChem article is out! It explores chemo- and regioselectivity in SAM-dependent aromatic C-methyltransferases. We show that SfmM2 and NapB5 catalyze context-dependent C-dimethylation as well as C- and O-methylation of flavonoids, governed by binding geometry and nucleophile positioning.

Context‐Dependent Chemoselectivity of Aromatic C‐Methyltransferases

Chemoselectivity is context-dependent: The SAM-dependent C-MTs SfmM2 and NapB5 from streptomycetes catalyze the C- and/or O-dimethylation of aromatic substrates, including l-tyrosine and flavonoids. ...

chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Late greetings from the Annual Conference of the Association for General and Applied Microbiology (VAAM), 22.-25.03.2026, Berlin. Our FOR5596 group member Tingyi Zhan presented her work on 'SAM- and cobalamin- dependent conversion of estrogens into androgens'. Thank you for the great talk!

We organized a SAM session at the GDCh Biochemistry Conference 2026 in Würzburg. Research insights and results on the diversity of SAM-dependent enzymes were presented by several FOR5596 group members. Thank you all for the fruitfull discussions!

Our new J. Nat. Prod. review is out! It explores how enzymes install methyl groups into sugars of natural products; driving structural diversity and biological activity. Enzymatic strategies enable targeted creation of new chemical structures. Congrats to all authors from FOR5596!

Glucose 6-phosphate: the diversity of C-methylation in sugar moieties within natural product biosynthesis

Covering: Up to 2026Methylation is one of the most frequent and functionally significant modifications in natural product biosynthesis. This transformation generally involves the cosubstrate S-adenosy...

pubs.rsc.org

Greetings from the 38th Irsee Natural Product Symposium in Irsee, Germany. We had the pleasure of organizing a SAM session featuring Prof. Dr. Jörg Pietruszka, Prof. Dr. Andreas Kirschning, and Dr. Anna Vagstad as guest speakers. Thank you for the inspiring talks and stimulating discussions!

We are excited to report an E. coli strain with an artificial SAM-cycle (pubs.acs.org/articlesonre...). Congratulations to Zhong, Wen and Seseg for their excellent team effort.

We took a deeper look at "Kinetic Modeling and Parametrization of Cascade Reactions with NMRPy and PySCeS" with Prof. Johann Rohwer. Thank you for the insightful talk and fruitful discussions.

Our new J. Nat. Prod. study is out! Discover how the enzyme NapB5 achieves precise dual C-methylation and expands natural-product diversity across Actinomycetes. Congratulation to all authors from FOR5596! @andexerlab.bsky.social

In Vitro Characterization of the Aromatic SAM-Dependent C-Methyltransferase NapB5

Aromatic polyketide synthase (PKS) products undergo diverse tailoring reactions in the biosynthesis of natural products. S-Adenosyl-l-methionine (SAM)-dependent C-methyltransferases (C-MTs) play a key...

pubs.acs.org

Late greetings from the Science Days at Europa-Park! We are impressed by all the motivated school kids interested in STEM! Thank you to all our team members for your help!

We are preparing for the Science Days at Europa-Park (23.-25.10.25). We are encouraging pupils to pursue STEM!

Greetings from all of our members at the three-day annual meeting in St. Peter in 2025. Thank you for a successfull year filled with hard work, collaboration, great ideas and a lot of motivation for our future research.

We are organizing a session on SAM-dependent enzymes at the 38th Irsee Natural Product Symposium, February 25-27, 2026. We are pleased to welcome the following speakers: Prof. Andrea Rentmeister, Prof. Jörg Pietruszka, and Prof. Andreas Kirschning. Please spread the news and join us in Irsee!

Greetings to all the doctoral researchers of the FOR5596 research unit who spent the last week at a summer school in Berlin!

Congratulations to FOR5596 member Andrea @rentmeisterlab.bsky.social for receiving the Wittig-Grignard Award!! 🎉

RentmeisterLab@rentmeisterlab.bsky.social · last yr.

It was an honour to give a talk today in the historic lecture hall of Université Paris Cité, Faculté de Pharmacie after receiving the Wittig-Grignard Award yesterday. Thank you very much Bruno Sargueil and Mélanie Ethève-Quelquejeu for the invitation 🤩

Congratulations to all the authors of this paper, which just ranked in the top 10% of the most viewed papers published in ChemBioChem in 2023! We are very excited to be able to build on this amazing work in our FOR5596 research group. @andexerlab.bsky.social @rentmeisterlab.bsky.social

Biomimetic S‐Adenosylmethionine Regeneration Starting from Multiple Byproducts Enables Biocatalytic Alkylation with Radical SAM Enzymes**

The biomimetic regeneration system for S-adenosylmethionine (SAM) and SAM analogues presented is based on the salvage of the adenine moiety and in situ supply of d-ribose and polyphosphate. It is com...

chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Ever wondered why prenylation and methylation use different cofactor scaffolds? We now show that the SAM scaffold enables both: Chimeric cofactors enable methyltransferase-catalyzed prenylation: Chem www.cell.com/chem/fulltex... Kudos to @nicocorn.bsky.social & Arne Hoffmann and all authors 👌👏🤩

Chimeric cofactors enable methyltransferase-catalyzed prenylation

In nature, many methyltransferases (C1) use S-adenosyl-l-methionine (AdoMet or SAM) as a cofactor for methyl transfer, whereas prenyltransferases (C5) use dimethylallyl diphosphate (DMAPP). We enginee...

cell.com

If you want to know how to tell an N from an O, you can get some ideas in our new paper. This was a great team effort, introducing us to new methods: MD w/ Ferran Feixas & Marc Garcia Borràs (Girona) + HDX-MS w/ Wieland Steinchen & Gert Bange @bangebalcony.bsky.social pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

How to Tell an N from an O: Controlling the Chemoselectivity of Methyltransferases

S-Adenosyl-l-methionine (SAM)-dependent methyltransferases (MTs) are important enzymes in numerous biological pathways. They share a common SN2 mechanism but act on different nucleophilic substrates i...

pubs.acs.org

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