Mechanistically diverse enzyme superfamilies: the importance of chemistry in the evolution of catalysis

✍ Scribed by John A Gerlt; Patricia C Babbitt

• Book ID: 104415076
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 779 KB
• Volume: 2
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1367-5931
• DOI: 10.1016/s1367-5931(98)80091-4

✦ Synopsis

The strategy that nature has used to evolve new catalytic activities from pre-existing enzymes (i.e. retention of substrate binding or of catalytic mechanism) has been controversial. Recent work supports a strategy in which a partial reaction, catalyzed by a progenitor, is retained, and the active-site architecture is modified to allow the intermediate generated to be directed to different products.