Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2023 Feb:72:102246.
doi: 10.1016/j.cbpa.2022.102246. Epub 2023 Jan 2.

Expanding the viewpoint: Leveraging sequence information in enzymology

Affiliations
Review

Expanding the viewpoint: Leveraging sequence information in enzymology

Hayley L Knox et al. Curr Opin Chem Biol. 2023 Feb.

Abstract

The use of protein sequence to inform enzymology in terms of structure, mechanism, and function has burgeoned over the past two decades. Referred to as genomic enzymology, the utilization of bioinformatic tools such as sequence similarity networks and phylogenetic analyses has allowed the identification of new substrates and metabolites, novel pathways, and unexpected reaction mechanisms. The holistic examination of superfamilies can yield insight into the origins and paths of evolution of enzymes and the range of their substrates and mechanisms. Herein, we highlight advances in the use of genomic enzymology to address problems which the in-depth analyses of a single enzyme alone could not enable.

Keywords: Enzyme evolution; Genome neighborhood; Genomic enzymology; Metabolic pathways; Sequence similarity network.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Overview of applications of genomic enzymology in recent years: determining pathways (PDB ID: 6P78), defining a superfamily or family (SSN generated from sequences from Knox et al. and visualized in Cytoscape [4]), exploring substrate specificity (PDB ID: 5V1V), understanding enzyme evolution, and predicting mechanism (mechanism adapted from Braffman et al. [5])
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Abbreviated SSN of the FAO superfamily adapted from Tararina and Allen [16] and visualized in Cytoscape. The eight enzyme functional subgroups are labeled with representative structures for illustrative purposes. PDB IDs are 2IID (L-amino acid oxidase), 3NKS (protoporphyrinogen IX oxidase), 5KRQ (renalase), 6C71 (nicotine oxidoreductase), 1OJ9 (monoamine oxidase), 2UXN (lysine-specific demethylase), 5MOG (phytoene desaturase), and 5MBX (N1-acetylpolyamine oxidase).
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
An example of linker proteins found within a SSN, shown as purple boxes. The enzymes act as a “link” between the two clusters, illustrated in blue and red. SSN generated from sequences in O’Toole et al. [41] and visualized in Cytoscape.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Schematic example of RiPP processing. Amino acids and modified residues are represented by colored spheres.

References

    1. Babbitt PC, Hasson MS, Wedekind JE, Palmer DR, Barrett WC, Reed GH, Rayment I, Ringe D, Kenyon GL, and Gerlt JA (1996). The enolase superfamily: a general strategy for enzyme-catalyzed abstraction of the alpha-protons of carboxylic acids. Biochemistry-Us 35, 16489–16501. - PubMed
    1. Allen KN, and Whitman CP (2021). The Birth of Genomic Enzymology: Discovery of the Mechanistically Diverse Enolase Superfamily. Biochemistry-Us 60, 3515–3528. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Zallot R, Oberg N, and Gerlt JA (2021). Discovery of new enzymatic functions and metabolic pathways using genomic enzymology web tools. Curr Opin Biotechnol 69, 77–90. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Knox HL, Sinner EK, Townsend CA, Boal AK, and Booker SJ (2022). Structure of a B12-dependent radical SAM enzyme in carbapenem biosynthesis. Nature 602, 343–348.

      * The structures of a cobalamin-dependent radical SAM enzyme display the shared structural folds and identifies the features that determine the reactivity of the family of enzymes.

    1. Braffman NR, Ruskoski TB, Davis KM, Glasser NR, Johnson C, Okafor CD, Boal AK, and Balskus EP (2022). Structural basis for an unprecedented enzymatic alkylation in cylindrocyclophane biosynthesis. Elife 11. - PMC - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources