Lysine degradation through the saccharopine pathway in bacteria: LKR and SDH in bacteria and its relationship to the plant and animal enzymes.

Guilherme Coutinho de Mello Serrano, Thaís Rezende e Silva Figueira, Eduardo Kiyota, Natalia Zanata, Paulo Arruda

Centro de Biologia Molecular e Engenharia Genética, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), Campinas, SP, Brazil.

FEBS letters 2012 Mar 23

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Lysine degradation through the saccharopine pathway has been shown only in plants and animals. Here, we show that bacteria possess the genes encoding lysine-ketoglutarate reductase (LKR) and saccharopine dehydrogenase (SDH). In Silicibacter, the contiguous lkr and sdh genes are interspersed, in another frame, by a polypeptide of unknown function. The bacterial enzyme does not contain the 110-amino-acid interdomain (ID) that intersperses the LKR and SDH domains of the plant enzyme. The ID was found in Cyanobacteria interspersing polypeptides without similarities and activities of LKR and SDH. The LKR/SDH bifunctional polypeptide of animals and plants may have arisen from a α-proteobacterium with a configuration similar to that of Silicibacter, whereas the ID in the plant enzyme may have been inherited from Cyanobacteria. Copyright Â© 2012 Federation of European Biochemical Societies. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Citation

Guilherme Coutinho de Mello Serrano, Thaís Rezende e Silva Figueira, Eduardo Kiyota, Natalia Zanata, Paulo Arruda. Lysine degradation through the saccharopine pathway in bacteria: LKR and SDH in bacteria and its relationship to the plant and animal enzymes. FEBS letters. 2012 Mar 23;586(6):905-11