RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Classification of the glyphosate target enzyme (5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase)
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2020.05.27.118265
DO 10.1101/2020.05.27.118265
A1 Leino, Lyydia
A1 Tall, Tuomas
A1 Helander, Marjo
A1 Saloniemi, Irma
A1 Saikkonen, Kari
A1 Ruuskanen, Suvi
A1 Puigbò, Pere
YR 2020
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/05/30/2020.05.27.118265.abstract
AB Glyphosate is the most common broad-spectrum herbicide. It targets the key enzyme of the shikimate pathway, 5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase (EPSPS), which synthesizes three essential aromatic amino acids (phenylalanine, tyrosine and tryptophan) in plants. Because the shikimate pathway is also found in many prokaryotes and fungi, the widespread use of glyphosate may have unsuspected impacts on the diversity and composition of microbial communities, including the human gut microbiome. Here, we introduce the first bioinformatics method to assess the potential sensitivity of organisms to glyphosate based on the type of EPSPS enzyme. We have precomputed a dataset of EPSPS sequences from thousands of species that will be an invaluable resource to advancing the research field. This novel methodology can classify sequences from >90% of eukaryotes and >80% of prokaryotes. A conservative estimate from our results shows that 54% of species in the core human gut microbiome are sensitive to glyphosate.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.