Like other forms of engineering, metabolic engineering requires knowledge of the components (the ‘parts list’) of the target system. Lack of such knowledge impairs both rational engineering design and diagnosis of the reasons for failures; it also poses problems for the related field of metabolic reconstruction, which uses a cell’s parts list to recreate its metabolic activities in silico. Despite spectacular progress in genome sequencing, the parts lists for most organisms that we seek to manipulate remain highly incomplete, due to the dual problem of ‘unknown’ proteins and ‘orphan’ enzymes. The former are all the proteins deduced from genome sequence that have no known function, and the latter are all the enzymes described in the literature (and often catalogued in the EC database) for which no corresponding gene has been reported. Unknown proteins constitute up to about half of the proteins in prokaryotic genomes, and much more than this in higher plants and animals. Orphan enzymes make up more than a third of the EC database. Attacking the ‘missing parts list’ problem is accordingly one of the great challenges for post-genomic biology, and a tremendous opportunity to discover new facets of life’s machinery. Success will require a co-ordinated community-wide attack, sustained over years. In this attack, comparative genomics is probably the single most effective strategy, for it can reliably predict functions for unknown proteins and genes for orphan enzymes. Furthermore, it is cost-efficient and increasingly straightforward to deploy owing to a proliferation of databases and associated tools.
Tetrahydromonapterin is a major pterin in Escherichia coli and is hypothesized to be the cofactor for phenylalanine hydroxylase (PhhA) in Pseudomonas aeruginosa, but neither its biosynthetic origin nor its cofactor role has been clearly demonstrated. A comparative genomics analysis implicated the enigmatic folX and folM genes in tetrahydromonapterin synthesis via their phyletic distribution and chromosomal clustering patterns. folX encodes dihydroneopterin triphosphate epimerase, which interconverts dihydroneopterin triphosphate and dihydromonapterin triphosphate. folM encodes an unusual short-chain dehydrogenase/ reductase known to have dihydrofolate and dihydrobiopterin reductase activity. The roles of FolX and FolM were tested experimentally first in E. coli, which lacks PhhA and in which the expression of P. aeruginosa PhhA plus the recycling enzyme pterin 4a-carbinolamine dehydratase, PhhB, rescues tyrosine auxotrophy. This rescue was abrogated by deleting folX or folM and restored by expressing the deleted gene from a plasmid. The folX deletion selectively eliminated tetrahydromonapterin production, which far exceeded folate production. Purified FolM showed high, NADPH-dependent dihydromonapterin reductase activity. These results were substantiated in P. aeruginosa by deleting tyrA (making PhhA the sole source of tyrosine) and folX. The ⌬tyrA strain was, as expected, prototrophic for tyrosine, whereas the ⌬tyrA ⌬folX strain was auxotrophic. As in E. coli, the folX deletant lacked tetrahydromonapterin. Collectively, these data establish that tetrahydromonapterin formation requires both FolX and FolM, that tetrahydromonapterin is the physiological cofactor for PhhA, and that tetrahydromonapterin can outrank folate as an end product of pterin biosynthesis.
Tetrahydropterin-dependent aromatic amino acid hydroxylases (AAHs) are known from animals and microbes but not plants. A survey of genomes and ESTs revealed AAH-like sequences in gymnosperms, mosses, and algae. Analysis of fulllength AAH cDNAs from Pinus taeda, Physcomitrella patens, and Chlamydomonas reinhardtii indicated that the encoded proteins form a distinct clade within the AAH family. These proteins were shown to have Phe hydroxylase activity by functional complementation of an Escherichia coli Tyr auxotroph and by enzyme assays. The P. taeda and P. patens AAHs were specific for Phe, required iron, showed Michaelian kinetics, and were active as monomers. Uniquely, they preferred 10-formyltetrahydrofolate to any physiological tetrahydropterin as cofactor and, consistent with preferring a folate cofactor, retained activity in complementation tests with tetrahydropterin-depleted E. coli host strains. Targeting assays in Arabidopsis thaliana mesophyll protoplasts using green fluorescent protein fusions, and import assays with purified Pisum sativum chloroplasts, indicated chloroplastic localization. Targeting assays further indicated that pterin-4a-carbinolamine dehydratase, which regenerates the AAH cofactor, is also chloroplastic. Ablating the single AAH gene in P. patens caused accumulation of Phe and caffeic acid esters. These data show that nonflowering plants have functional plastidial AAHs, establish an unprecedented electron donor role for a folate, and uncover a novel link between folate and aromatic metabolism.
Dihydroneopterin aldolase (FolB) catalyzes conversion of dihydroneopterin to 6-hydroxymethyldihydropterin (HMDHP) in the classical folate biosynthesis pathway. However, folB genes are missing from the genomes of certain bacteria from the phyla Chloroflexi, Acidobacteria, Firmicutes, Planctomycetes, and Spirochaetes. Almost all of these folB-deficient genomes contain an unusual paralog of the tetrahydrobiopterin synthesis enzyme 6-pyruvoyltetrahydropterin synthase (PTPS) in which a glutamate residue replaces or accompanies the catalytic cysteine. A similar PTPS paralog from the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum is known to form HMDHP from dihydroneopterin triphosphate in vitro and has been proposed to provide a bypass to the FolB step in vivo. Bacterial genes encoding PTPS-like proteins with active-site glutamate, cysteine, or both residues were accordingly tested together with the P. falciparum gene for complementation of the Escherichia coli folB mutation. The P. falciparum sequence and bacterial sequences with glutamate or glutamate plus cysteine were active; those with cysteine alone were not. These results demonstrate that PTPS paralogs with an active-site glutamate (designated PTPS-III proteins) can functionally replace FolB in vivo. Recombinant bacterial PTPS-III proteins, like the P. falciparum enzyme, mediated conversion of dihydroneopterin triphosphate to HMDHP, but other PTPS proteins did not. Neither PTPS-III nor other PTPS proteins exhibited significant dihydroneopterin aldolase activity. Phylogenetic analysis indicated that PTPS-III proteins may have arisen independently in various PTPS lineages. Consistent with this possibility, merely introducing a glutamate residue into the active site of a PTPS protein conferred incipient activity in the growth complementation assay, and replacing glutamate with alanine in a PTPS-III protein abolished complementation.
The Enhancer of Zeste Polycomb group proteins, which are encoded by a small gene family in Arabidopsis thaliana, participate to the control of plant development. In the tomato (Solanum lycopersicum), these proteins are encoded by three genes (SlEZ1, SlEZ2 and SlEZ3) that display specific expression profiles. Using a gene specific RNAi strategy, we demonstrate that repression of SlEZ2 correlates with a general reduction of H3K27me3 levels, indicating that SlEZ2 is part of an active PRC2 complex. Reduction of SlEZ2 gene expression impacts the vegetative development of tomato plants, consistent with SlEZ2 having retained at least some of the functions of the Arabidopsis CURLY LEAF (CLF) protein. Notwithstanding, we observed significant differences between transgenic SlEZ2 RNAi tomato plants and Arabidopsis clf mutants. First, we found that reduced SlEZ2 expression has dramatic effects on tomato fruit development and ripening, functions not described in Arabidopsis for the CLF protein. In addition, repression of SlEZ2 has no significant effect on the flowering time or the control of flower organ identity, in contrast to the Arabidopsis clf mutation. Taken together, our results are consistent with a diversification of the function of CLF orthologues in plants, and indicate that although partly conserved amongst plants, the function of EZ proteins need to be newly investigated for non-model plants because they might have been recruited to specific developmental processes.
PTEN (phosphatase and tensin homologue deleted on chromosome ten) proteins are dual phosphatases with both protein and phosphoinositide phosphatase activity. They modulate signalling pathways controlling growth, metabolism and apoptosis in animals and are implied in several human diseases. In the present paper we describe a novel class of PTEN pro-teins in plants, termed PTEN2, which comprises the AtPTEN (Arabidopsis PTEN) 2a and AtPTEN2b proteins in Arabidopsis. Both display low in vitro tyrosine phosphatase activity. In addition, AtPTEN2a actively dephosphorylates in vitro the 3' phosphate group of PI3P (phosphatidylinositol 3-phosphate), PI(3,4)P2 (phosphatidylinositol 3,4-bisphosphate) and PI(3,5)P2 (phosphatidylinositol 3,5-bisphosphate). In contrast with animal PTENs, PI(3,4,5)P3 (phosphatidylinositol 3,4,5-trisphosphate) is a poor substrate. Site-directed mutagenesis of AtPTEN2a and molecular modelling of protein-phosphoinositide interactions indicated that substitutions at the PTEN2 core catalytic site of the Lys267 and Gly268 residues found in animals, which are critical for animal PTEN activity, by Met267 and Ala268 found in the eudicot PTEN2 are responsible for changes in substrate specificity. Remarkably, the AtPTEN2a protein also displays strong binding activity for PA (phosphatidic acid), a major lipid second messenger in plants. Promoter::GUS (β-glucuronidase) fusion, transcript and protein analyses further showed the transcriptional regulation of the ubiquitously expressed AtPTEN2a and AtPTEN2b by salt and osmotic stress. The results of the present study suggest a function for this novel class of plant PTEN proteins as an effector of lipid signalling in plants.
The SlPPC2 phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase (PEPC; EC 4.1.1.31) gene from tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) is differentially and specifically expressed in expanding tissues of developing tomato fruit. We recently showed that a 1966 bp DNA fragment located upstream of the ATG codon of the SlPPC2 gene (GenBank AJ313434) confers appropriate fruit-specificity in transgenic tomato. In this study, we further investigated the regulation of the SlPPC2 promoter gene by analysing the SlPPC2 cis-regulating region fused to either the firefly luciferase (LUC) or the β-glucuronidase (GUS) reporter gene, using stable genetic transformation and biolistic transient expression assays in the fruit. Biolistic analyses of 5′ SlPPC2 promoter deletions fused to LUC in fruits at the 8th day after anthesis revealed that positive regulatory regions are mostly located in the distal region of the promoter. In addition, a 5′ UTR leader intron present in the 1966 bp fragment contributes to the proper temporal regulation of LUC activity during fruit development. Interestingly, the SlPPC2 promoter responds to hormones (ethylene) and metabolites (sugars) regulating fruit growth and metabolism. When tested by transient expression assays, the chimeric promoter:LUC fusion constructs allowed gene expression in both fruit and leaf, suggesting that integration into the chromatin is required for fruit-specificity. These results clearly demonstrate that SlPPC2 gene is under tight transcriptional regulation in the developing fruit and that its promoter can be employed to drive transgene expression specifically during the cell expansion stage of tomato fruit. Taken together, the SlPPC2 promoter offers great potential as a candidate for driving transgene expression specifically in developing tomato fruit from various tomato cultivars.
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