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Surprisingly, the identified karrikin receptor showed the ability to selectively perceive signaling from one type of sesquiterpene compound but not its mirror image, a trait called "stereospecificity."

Those similar substances include flavonoids, a group of plant metabolites that have antioxidant effects, and sesquiterpene lactones, a class of chemical compounds that are known to have anti-inflammatory properties, Merville said.

Artemisinin is a sesquiterpene endoperoxide with potent antimalarial properties, produced by the plant Artemisia annua.

We surmised that the decreased viability and reduced production of sesquiterpene products in Y285 might be caused by the cytochrome P450 responsible for oxidizing amorphadiene, or by the rapid accumulation of artemisinic acid.

Increasing the enzyme expression levels through codon optimization of the relevant genes, in addition to increasing messenger RNA levels by the introduction of an additional 5′ promoter to the most poorly expressed gene, led to a three-fold improvement in sesquiterpene production.