Publication Date:
2008-09-20
Description:
In microorganisms, menaquinone is an obligatory component of the electron-transfer pathway. It is derived from chorismate by seven enzymes in Escherichia coli. However, a bioinformatic analysis of whole genome sequences has suggested that some microorganisms, including pathogenic species such as Helicobacter pylori and Campylobacter jejuni, do not have orthologs of the men genes, even though they synthesize menaquinone. We deduced the outline of this alternative pathway in a nonpathogenic strain of Streptomyces by bioinformatic screening, gene knockouts, shotgun cloning with isolated mutants, and in vitro studies with recombinant enzymes. As humans and commensal intestinal bacteria, including lactobacilli, lack this pathway, it represents an attractive target for the development of chemotherapeutics.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Hiratsuka, Tomoshige -- Furihata, Kazuo -- Ishikawa, Jun -- Yamashita, Haruyuki -- Itoh, Nobuya -- Seto, Haruo -- Dairi, Tohru -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2008 Sep 19;321(5896):1670-3. doi: 10.1126/science.1160446.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Biotechnology Research Center, Toyama Prefectural University, Toyama 939-0398, Japan.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18801996" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Archaea/enzymology/genetics/metabolism
;
Bacteria/enzymology/genetics/*metabolism
;
Biosynthetic Pathways/genetics
;
Campylobacter jejuni/enzymology/genetics/metabolism
;
Chorismic Acid/metabolism
;
Cloning, Molecular
;
Computational Biology
;
Enzymes/genetics/metabolism
;
*Genes, Bacterial
;
Helicobacter pylori/enzymology/genetics/metabolism
;
Molecular Sequence Data
;
Mutagenesis
;
Nucleosides/isolation & purification/*metabolism
;
Recombinant Proteins/metabolism
;
Streptomyces coelicolor/enzymology/genetics/*metabolism
;
Thermus thermophilus/enzymology/genetics/metabolism
;
Vitamin K 2/*metabolism
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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