The Arsenic Methylation Cycle: How Microbial Communities Adapted Methylarsenicals for Use as Weapons in the Continuing War for Dominance

Abstract

Chen and Rosen Arsenic-Containing Antibiotics for surviving and thriving in the microbial community, life has to adapted and use environmental arsenic as a weapon. Both MAs(III) and AST are natural products with antibiotic-like properties, both are toxic methylarsenicals produced by some microbe and further kill off its competitors, and resistances have arisen for both.

Identification of the Biosynthetic Gene Cluster for the Organoarsenical Antibiotic Arsinothricin

“…To identify the AST BGC knowing that methylation is involved, we made the assumption that a B. gladioli GSRB05 enzyme would be related to other known methylating enzymes. Arsenic methylation catalyzed by the ArsM As(III) S -adenosylmethionine methyltransferase is a common reaction in arsenic metabolism ( 16 ). Bacterial and algal ArsM enzymes methylate inorganic As(III) up to three times to produce methylarsenite [MAs(III)], dimethylarsenite [DMAs(III)], and trimethylarsenite [TMAs(III)].…”

Effective Removal of Water-Soluble Methylated Arsenic Contaminants with Phosphorene Oxide Nanoflakes: A DFT Study

“…In terms of toxicity, trivalent arsenicals are more toxic and mobile than pentavalent ones, which is related to the speciation and its affinity with the -SH groups in biomolecules such as glutathione and cysteinyl residues in enzymes [55][56][57]. In the first place, trivalent arsenicals are deprotonated above pH=9.2; then, trivalent arsenicals are neutrally charged at neutral and physiological pH [55,58].…”

Genomic Insight of Alicyclobacillus mali FL18 Isolated From an Arsenic-Rich Hot Spring

“…The arsRBC operon is present in several microbes, among them Staphylococcus aureus plasmid pI258 (Ji and Silver, 1992), whereas arsRDABC has been characterized in Escherichia coli plasmid R773 and in other microorganisms (Saltikov and Olson, 2002). Many microbes possess an additional gene, arsM, coding for an arsenite methyltransferase that catalyzes the conversion of inorganic arsenic into mono-, di-, and tri-methylated products (Huang et al, 2018;Mestrot et al, 2020).…”