Publication Date:
2012-09-01
Description:
Relative to the atmosphere, much of the aerobic ocean is supersaturated with methane; however, the source of this important greenhouse gas remains enigmatic. Catabolism of methylphosphonic acid by phosphorus-starved marine microbes, with concomitant release of methane, has been suggested to explain this phenomenon, yet methylphosphonate is not a known natural product, nor has it been detected in natural systems. Further, its synthesis from known natural products would require unknown biochemistry. Here we show that the marine archaeon Nitrosopumilus maritimus encodes a pathway for methylphosphonate biosynthesis and that it produces cell-associated methylphosphonate esters. The abundance of a key gene in this pathway in metagenomic data sets suggests that methylphosphonate biosynthesis is relatively common in marine microbes, providing a plausible explanation for the methane paradox.〈br /〉〈br /〉〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3466329/" target="_blank"〉〈img src="https://static.pubmed.gov/portal/portal3rc.fcgi/4089621/img/3977009" border="0"〉〈/a〉 〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3466329/" target="_blank"〉This paper as free author manuscript - peer-reviewed and accepted for publication〈/a〉〈br /〉〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Metcalf, William W -- Griffin, Benjamin M -- Cicchillo, Robert M -- Gao, Jiangtao -- Janga, Sarath Chandra -- Cooke, Heather A -- Circello, Benjamin T -- Evans, Bradley S -- Martens-Habbena, Willm -- Stahl, David A -- van der Donk, Wilfred A -- F32 GM095024/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/ -- P001 GM077596/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/ -- P01 GM077596/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/ -- S10 RR028833/RR/NCRR NIH HHS/ -- Howard Hughes Medical Institute/ -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2012 Aug 31;337(6098):1104-7. doi: 10.1126/science.1219875.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. metcalf@uiuc.edu〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22936780" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Aerobiosis
;
Aquatic Organisms/genetics/*metabolism
;
Archaea/genetics/*metabolism
;
Archaeal Proteins/classification/genetics/*metabolism
;
Dioxygenases/classification/genetics/metabolism
;
Gene Order
;
Metagenome
;
Methane/*biosynthesis
;
Organophosphorus Compounds/*metabolism
;
Phylogeny
;
Seawater/chemistry/microbiology
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
