First discovered and named by E. Rink and H. Böhm in 1974 they were isolated in cell suspension cultures of the Papaveraceae Macleaya microcarpa.
Since then, many minor advancements have been made in this particular topic, but BBE-like enzymes, either for their lack of study, or the lack of clear indications that it might contain useful information for other scientific research, have yet to be fully worked on, and subsequently known at their full complexity.