Mechanisms of Fixation of Carbon Dioxide by Heterotrophs and Autotrophs

Utter, Merton F.; Wood, Harland G.

doi:10.1002/9780470122570.ch2

Cited by 17 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 178 publications

(12 reference statements)

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“…Figure 2 describes the level of understanding of the Wood-Ljungdahl pathway in 1951 in a scheme reproduced from a landmark paper by H.G. Wood [44], which was published in the same year that Wood and Utter suggested that the mechanism of acetate synthesis could constitute a previously unrecognized mechanism of autotrophic CO 2 fixation [46].

{normalC}_{6} {normalH}_{12} {normalO}_{6} + 2 {normalH}_{2} O \to 2 {CH}_{3} COOH + 8 H + 2 {CO}_{2}

8 H + 2^{*} {CO}_{2} \to^{*} {CH}_{3}^{*} COOH + 2 {normalH}_{2} 0

…”

Section: Importance Of the Wood-ljungdahl Pathwaymentioning

confidence: 99%

Acetogenesis and the Wood–Ljungdahl pathway of CO2 fixation

Ragsdale

Pierce

2008

Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA) - Proteins and Proteomics

1,026

816

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I. SummaryConceptually, the simplest way to synthesize an organic molecule is to construct it one carbon at a time. The Wood-Ljungdahl pathway of CO 2 fixation involves this type of stepwise process. The biochemical events that underlie the condensation of two one-carbon units to form the two-carbon compound, acetate, have intrigued chemists, biochemists, and microbiologists for many decades. We begin this review with a description of the biology of acetogenesis. Then, we provide a short history of the important discoveries that have led to the identification of the key components and steps of this usual mechanism of CO and CO 2 fixation. In this historical perspective, we have included reflections that hopefully will sketch the landscape of the controversies, hypotheses, and opinions that led to the key experiments and discoveries. We then describe the properties of the genes and enzymes involved in the pathway and conclude with a section describing some major questions that remain unanswered.

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{normalC}_{6} {normalH}_{12} {normalO}_{6} + 2 {normalH}_{2} O \to 2 {CH}_{3} COOH + 8 H + 2 {CO}_{2}

8 H + 2^{*} {CO}_{2} \to^{*} {CH}_{3}^{*} COOH + 2 {normalH}_{2} 0

…”

Section: Importance Of the Wood-ljungdahl Pathwaymentioning

confidence: 99%

Acetogenesis and the Wood–Ljungdahl pathway of CO2 fixation

Ragsdale

Pierce

2008

Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA) - Proteins and Proteomics

1,026

816

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“…Finally we will use this decomposition together with evidence from gene distributions to propose their historical relation and identify constraints that could have spanned the Darwinian and precellular eras. [90][91][92]94] consists of a sequence of five reactions that directly reduce one CO 2 to a methyl group, a parallel reaction reducing CO 2 to CO, and a final reaction combining the methyl and CO groups with each other and with a molecule of CoA to form the thioester acetyl-CoA. The reactions are shown below in figure 5, and discussed in detail in section 4.…”

Section: Core Carbon Metabolismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…At the level of network topology, the linear Wood-Ljungdahl (WL) fixation pathway [90][91][92] is strikingly unlike the five loop pathways. Instead of covalently binding CO 2 onto pathway substrates, which then serve as platforms for reduction, the WL reactions directly reduce one-carbon (C 1 ) groups, and then distribute the partly-or fully-reduced intermediates to other anabolic pathways where they are incorporated into metabolites.…”

Section: Network-autocatalysis In Carbon-fixation Pathwaysmentioning

confidence: 99%

The compositional and evolutionary logic of metabolism

2012

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Metabolism is built on a foundation of organic chemistry, and employs structures and interactions at many scales. Despite these sources of complexity, metabolism also displays striking and robust regularities in the forms of modularity and hierarchy, which may be described compactly in terms of relatively few principles of composition. These regularities render metabolic architecture comprehensible as a system, and also suggests the order in which layers of that system came into existence. In addition metabolism also serves as a foundational layer in other hierarchies, up to at least the levels of cellular integration including bioenergetics and molecular replication, and trophic ecology. The recapitulation of patterns first seen in metabolism, in these higher levels, motivates us to interpret metabolism as a source of causation or constraint on many forms of organization in the biosphere. Many of the forms of modularity and hierarchy exhibited by metabolism are readily interpreted as stages in the emergence of catalytic control by living systems over organic chemistry, sometimes recapitulating or incorporating geochemical mechanisms. We identify as modules, either subsets of chemicals and reactions, or subsets of functions, that are re-used in many contexts with a conserved internal structure. At the small molecule substrate level, module boundaries are often associated with the most complex reaction mechanisms, catalyzed by highly conserved enzymes. Cofactors form a biosynthetically and functionally distinctive control layer over the small-molecule substrate. The most complex members among the cofactors are often associated with the reactions at module boundaries in the substrate networks, while simpler cofactors participate in widely generalized reactions. The highly tuned chemical structures of cofactors (sometimes exploiting distinctive properties of the elements of the periodic table) thereby act as 'keys' that incorporate classes of organic reactions within biochemistry. Module boundaries provide the interfaces where change is concentrated, when we catalogue extant diversity of metabolic phenotypes. The same modules that organize the compositional diversity of metabolism are argued, with many explicit examples, to have governed long-term evolution. Early evolution of core metabolism, and especially of carbon-fixation, appears to have required very few innovations, and to have used few rules of composition of conserved modules, to produce adaptations to simple chemical or energetic differences of environment without diverse solutions and without historical contingency. We demonstrate these features of metabolism at each of several levels of hierarchy, beginning with the small-molecule metabolic substrate and network architecture, continuing with cofactors and key conserved reactions, and culminating in the aggregation of multiple diverse physical and biochemical processes in cells.Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 licence.

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“…2B). One would expect the chemical synthesis to yield [1] Acetyl-CoA carboxylase, [2] malonyl-CoA reductase, [3] propionyl-CoA synthase, [4] propionyl-CoA carboxylase, [5] methylmalonyl-CoA epimerase, [6] methylmalonyl-CoA mutase, [7] succinyl-CoA:(S)-malate-CoA transferase, [8] succinate dehydrogenase, [9] …”

Section: Identification Of the Unknown Coa Thioester As Mesaconyl-c4-mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These organisms include some members of the alpha-, delta-and epsilonproteobacteria, green sulfur bacteria, and microaerophilic bacteria belonging to the early branching bacterial phylum Aquificae. At the beginning of the 1980s, a third autotrophic pathway was found in certain Gram-positive bacteria and methane-forming archaea, the reductive acetyl-CoA (Wood-Ljungdahl) pathway (5)(6)(7)(8). In these strictly anaerobic organisms that now also include some proteobacteria, planctomycetes, spirochetes, and Euryarchaeota, 1 CO 2 molecule is reduced to CO and 1 CO 2 molecule is reduced to a methyl group (bound to a carrier); subsequently, acetyl-CoA is synthesized from CO and this methyl group.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%