INVESTIGADORES
FERREIRO Diego Ulises
artículos
Título:
Quantifying structural relationships of metal-binding sites suggests origins of biological electron transfer
Autor/es:
BROMBERG, YANA; APTEKMANN, ARIEL A.; MAHLICH, YANNICK; COOK, LINDA; SENN, STEFAN; MILLER, MAXIMILLIAN; NANDA, VIKAS; FERREIRO, DIEGO U.; FALKOWSKI, PAUL G.
Revista:
Science Advances
Editorial:
Science Advances is the American Association for the Advancement of Science
Referencias:
Año: 2022 vol. 8
ISSN:
2375-2548
Resumen:
Biological redox reactions drive planetary biogeochemical cycles. Using a novel, structure-guided sequence analysis of proteins, we explored the patterns of evolution of enzymes responsible for these reactions. Our analysis reveals that the folds that bind transition metal-containing ligands have similar structural geometry and amino acid sequences across the full diversity of proteins. Similarity across folds reflects the availability of key transition metals over geological time and strongly suggests that transition metal-ligand binding had a small number of common peptide origins. We observe that structures central to our similarity network come primarily from oxidoreductases, suggesting that ancestral peptides may have also facilitated electron transfer reactions. Last, our results reveal that the earliest biologically functional peptides were likely available before the assembly of fully functional protein domains over 3.8 billion years ago.