Do lifestyles influence the presence of promiscuous enzymes in bacteria and Archaea metabolism?

• Published in: Sustainable Chemical Processes Vol. 4; no. 1; pp. 1 - 5
• Main Authors: Martínez-Núñez, Mario Alberto, Pérez-Rueda, Ernesto
• Format: Journal Article Book Review
• Language: English
• Published: Cham Springer International Publishing 16.02.2016; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Archaea; Bacteria; Chemistry; Chemistry and Materials Science; Chemistry/Food Science; Mini Review; Comparative genomics; Duplicated enzymes; Bacteria; Metabolism; Archaea
• ISSN: 2043-7129; 2043-7129
• DOI: 10.1186/s40508-016-0047-8

The adequacy of an organism to the environment depends in part on its ability to modify its repertoire of cellular components, such as transporters, regulatory proteins and metabolic enzymes. In this review we discuss some recent results showing how the environment influences the content of promiscuous enzymes in bacterial and archaeal metabolism. In this regard, the proportion of promiscuous enzymes do not depend on genome size, as has been reported for the complete repertoire of enzymes, but it is influenced by the lifestyles, where the fraction of promiscuous enzymes is high in free-living organisms, while there is a small fraction in intracellular organisms. Therefore, promiscuous enzymes are enriched in organisms that inhabit fluctuating environments, providing bacteria with an enzymatic repertoire of new activities that helps to face multiple ecological variables. Finally, we discuss the possible role of gene duplications that occur most frequently in promiscuous enzymes of free-living organisms, which aid expand the universe of possible functions.