Bacterial expansins and related proteins from the world of microbes.

ABSTRACT: The discovery of microbial expansins emerged from studies of the mechanism of plant cell growth and the molecular basis of plant cell wall extensibility. Expansins are wall-loosening proteins that are universal in the plant kingdom and are also found in a small set of phylogenetically diverse bacteria, fungi, and other organisms, most of which colonize plant surfaces. They loosen plant cell walls without detectable lytic activity. Bacterial expansins have attracted considerable attention recently for their potential use in cellulosic biomass conversion for biofuel production, as a means to disaggregate cellulosic structures by nonlytic means ("amorphogenesis"). Evolutionary analysis indicates that microbial expansins originated by multiple horizontal gene transfers from plants. Crystallogr

SUBMITTER: Georgelis N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4427351 | biostudies-literature | 2015 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature