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Comment
. 2020 Jan 28;117(4):1833-1835.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1921340117. Epub 2020 Jan 9.

Anaerobic bacteria need their vitamin B12 to digest estrogen

Montserrat Elías-Arnanz  1
Affiliations
Comment

Anaerobic bacteria need their vitamin B12 to digest estrogen

Montserrat Elías-Arnanz. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .
No abstract available

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Conflict of interest statement

The author declares no competing interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Proposed B12-dependent methylation of estrogen to androgen in anaerobic denitrifying bacteria. The putative catalytic and B12-binding units are EmtA and EmtB, respectively, which are encoded by the estrogen–up-regulated emtABCD operon. As in well-characterized B12-dependent methyltransferases, the cobalt in B12 is expected to cycle between the +3 and +1 oxidation states. The latter is a potent nucleophile that suffers occasional oxidative inactivation to the +2 state and requires reductive activation to reenter the catalytic cycle (dotted arrows). This may be mediated by EmtD (and EmtC) and/or other candidate proteins, whose genes are up-regulated in estrogen-fed cells. “X” is a methyl donor, whose identity is as-yet unknown. For comparison, a simplified schematic of the aerobic, irreversible, aromatase-catalyzed conversion of androgen to estrogen in mammals is shown on the left.
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