Plants, fungi and bacteria produce natural products that function as defenses that are deployed against predators and competitors. In medicine, these compounds have such applications as antibiotics, cancer drugs and cholesterol reducers. The team working with associate professor Dr. Robin Teufel and Dr. Britta Frensch of the Institute of Biology II of the Faculty of Biology of the University of Freiburg and researchers from the ETH Zürich in Switzerland were able to shed light on the key role of three enzymes that are involved in synthesizing a class of natural products. The researchers have published their findings in Nature Communications.