Journal
CURRENT OPINION IN CHEMICAL BIOLOGY
Volume 59, Issue -, Pages 147-154Publisher
ELSEVIER SCI LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.cbpa.2020.05.011
Keywords
Enzyme evolution; Natural products biosynthesis; Chemical diversity; Promiscuity; Generalist
Categories
Funding
- Abney Foundation
- CONACYT (Mexico) [203740]
- Martin Kushner Fellowship, from the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Natural product biosynthesis (NPB) is the Panda's Thumb of evolutionary biochemistry. Arm races between organisms, and ever-changing environments, result in relentless innovation. This review focusses on enzyme evolution in NPB. First, we review cases of de novo emergence, whereby a completely new enzymatic activity arose in a ligand-binding protein, or a new enzyme emerged including a completely new scaffold. Second, we briefly review the current models for enzyme evolution, and how they explain the inherent promiscuity of NPB enzymes and their tendency to produce multiple related products. We thus suggest that NPB enzymes a priori evolved to generate a specific product; they are, however, trapped in a multifunctional, generalist evolutionary state and thereby produce a diversity of products.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available