The Mutational Road not Taken: Using Ancestral Sequence Resurrection to Evaluate the Evolution of Plant Enzyme Substrate Preferences.

ABSTRACT: We investigated the flowering plant salicylic acid methyl transferase (SAMT) enzyme lineage to understand the evolution of substrate preference change. Previous studies indicated that a single amino acid replacement to the SAMT active site (H150M) was sufficient to change ancestral enzyme substrate preference from benzoic acid to the structurally similar substrate, salicylic acid (SA). Yet, subsequent studies have shown that the H150M function-changing replacement did not likely occur during the historical episode of enzymatic divergence studied. Therefore, we reinvestigated the origin of SA methylation preference here and additionally assessed the extent to which epistasis may act to limit mutational paths. We found that the SAMT lineage of enzymes acquired preference to methylate SA from

SUBMITTER: Catania EM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10853004 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature