Skip to main content
bioRxiv
  • Home
  • About
  • Submit
  • ALERTS / RSS
Advanced Search
New Results

Four Families of Folate-independent Methionine Synthases

View ORCID ProfileMorgan N. Price, Adam M. Deutschbauer, View ORCID ProfileAdam P. Arkin
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.21.054031
Morgan N. Price
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Morgan N. Price
  • For correspondence: morgannprice@yahoo.com
Adam M. Deutschbauer
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Adam P. Arkin
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Adam P. Arkin
  • Abstract
  • Full Text
  • Info/History
  • Metrics
  • Preview PDF
Loading

Abstract

Although most organisms synthesize methionine from homocysteine and methyl folates, some have “core” methionine synthases that lack folate-binding domains and use other methyl donors. In vitro, the characterized core synthases use methylcobalamin as a methyl donor, but in vivo, they probably rely on corrinoid (vitamin B12-binding) proteins. We identified four families of core methionine synthases that are distantly related to each other (under 30% pairwise amino acid identity). From the characterized enzymes, we identified the families MesA, which is found in methanogens, and MesB, which is found in anaerobic bacteria and archaea with the Wood-Ljungdahl pathway. A third uncharacterized family, MesC, is found in anaerobic archaea that have the Wood-Ljungdahl pathway and lack known forms of methionine synthase. We predict that most members of the MesB and MesC families accept methyl groups from the iron-sulfur corrinoid protein of that pathway. The fourth family, MesD, is found only in aerobic bacteria. Using transposon mutants and complementation, we show that MesD does not require 5-methyltetrahydrofolate or cobalamin. Instead, MesD requires an uncharacterized protein family (DUF1852) and oxygen for activity.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Footnotes

  • Many changes, including: taking into account the recent paper by Deobald et al; new fitness assays for Sphingomonas koreensis; complementation assays for MesD and MesX; redid the phylogenetic profiling against UniProt reference genomes

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
Back to top
PreviousNext
Posted November 09, 2020.
Download PDF
Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about bioRxiv.

NOTE: Your email address is requested solely to identify you as the sender of this article.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Four Families of Folate-independent Methionine Synthases
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from bioRxiv
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the bioRxiv website.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Share
Four Families of Folate-independent Methionine Synthases
Morgan N. Price, Adam M. Deutschbauer, Adam P. Arkin
bioRxiv 2020.04.21.054031; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.21.054031
Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo Google logo LinkedIn logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
Four Families of Folate-independent Methionine Synthases
Morgan N. Price, Adam M. Deutschbauer, Adam P. Arkin
bioRxiv 2020.04.21.054031; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.21.054031

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Subject Area

  • Microbiology
Subject Areas
All Articles
  • Animal Behavior and Cognition (4085)
  • Biochemistry (8755)
  • Bioengineering (6477)
  • Bioinformatics (23331)
  • Biophysics (11743)
  • Cancer Biology (9144)
  • Cell Biology (13242)
  • Clinical Trials (138)
  • Developmental Biology (7412)
  • Ecology (11364)
  • Epidemiology (2066)
  • Evolutionary Biology (15084)
  • Genetics (10397)
  • Genomics (14006)
  • Immunology (9115)
  • Microbiology (22036)
  • Molecular Biology (8777)
  • Neuroscience (47346)
  • Paleontology (350)
  • Pathology (1420)
  • Pharmacology and Toxicology (2480)
  • Physiology (3703)
  • Plant Biology (8045)
  • Scientific Communication and Education (1431)
  • Synthetic Biology (2207)
  • Systems Biology (6014)
  • Zoology (1249)