Variations in metabolic pathways create challenges for automated metabolic reconstructions: Examples from the tetrahydrofolate synthesis pathway.

ABSTRACT: The availability of thousands of sequenced genomes has revealed the diversity of biochemical solutions to similar chemical problems. Even for molecules at the heart of metabolism, such as cofactors, the pathway enzymes first discovered in model organisms like Escherichia coli or Saccharomyces cerevisiae are often not universally conserved. Tetrahydrofolate (THF) (or its close relative tetrahydromethanopterin) is a universal and essential C1-carrier that most microbes and plants synthesize de novo. The THF biosynthesis pathway and enzymes are, however, not universal and alternate solutions are found for most steps, making this pathway a challenge to annotate automatically in many genomes. Comparing THF pathway reconstructions and functional annotations of a chosen set of folate synthesis ge

SUBMITTER: de Crecy-Lagard V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4151868 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature