Thawing out frozen metabolic accidents

Leister, Dario

doi:10.1186/s12915-018-0621-5

Cited by 11 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 84 publications

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“…Why are nucleobases built from amino acids and not by oligomerization of HCN? It is not yet clear whether the answers to these questions lie in chance “frozen accidents” of prebiotic chemistry that were too difficult to displace in a complex system , or whether they became ubiquitous due to convergence toward an optimal chemical solution . It could well be that the processes by which life makes and breaks down its transient metabolic intermediates are just as fundamental to its nature and origin as RNA or cellular compartments.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is historical evidence that it is hard to transition to a fundamentally different reaction network; life has not ever done it as far back as we have evidence. Evolutionary biologists might describe this phenomenon as a “frozen metabolic accident”, , a variation of the “frozen accident” term historically coined by Crick to describe the universality of the genetic code . In short, once a (bio)chemical system begins to harbor multiple connected subsystems, it becomes essentially unalterable because a significant change would reverberate through all interconnected subsystems.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Nonenzymatic Metabolic Reactions and Life’s Origins

2020

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Prebiotic chemistry aims to explain how the biochemistry of life as we know it came to be. Most efforts in this area have focused on provisioning compounds of importance to life by multi-step synthetic routes that do not resemble biochemistry. However, gaining insight into why core metabolism uses the molecules, reactions, pathways, and overall organization that it does requires us to consider molecules not only as synthetic end goals. Equally important are the dynamic processes that build them up and break them down. This perspective has led many researchers to the hypothesis that the first stage of the origin of life began with the onset of a primitive non-enzymatic version of metabolism, initially catalyzed by naturally occurring minerals and metal ions. This view of life's origins has come to be known as "metabolism first". Continuity with modern metabolism would require a primitive version of metabolism to build and break down ketoacids, sugars, amino acids, and ribonucleotides in much the same way as the pathways that do it today. This review discusses metabolic pathways of relevance to the origin of life in a manner accessible to chemists, and summarizes experiments suggesting several pathways might have their roots in prebiotic chemistry. Finally, key remaining milestones for the protometabolic hypothesis are highlighted.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nonenzymatic Metabolic Reactions and Life’s Origins

2020

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“…A substantial redesign of the light reactions of photosynthesis has not been attempted yet, although reconstruction of some photosynthetic modules in prokaryotes, such as biosynthesis of carotenoids and Chl, as well as RuBisCO (Aigner et al., 2017; Chen et al., 2018; Sandmann et al., 1999), provide a good basis for further progress. The tailoring of the light reactions of plant photosynthesis has been limited to a few instances of trial‐and‐error experiments, overproducing components of the light reactions or auxiliary proteins associated with the photosynthetic apparatus (for review, see Leister 2019a).…”

Section: Strategies For Enhancing Photosynthesis and Their Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Overproduction of single photosynthetic proteins has been reported to enhance plant photosynthesis (for review, see Leister 2019a), although it is unclear whether the reported enhancements hold true under field conditions. More recently, nuclear overproduction of the plastid‐encoded D1 protein was reported to enhance both stress resistance and crop yield under field conditions (Chen et al., 2020).…”

Section: Strategies For Enhancing Photosynthesis and Their Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Redesigning the photosynthetic light reactions to enhance photosynthesis – the PhotoRedesign consortium

et al. 2021

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SUMMARY In this Perspective article, we describe the visions of the PhotoRedesign consortium funded by the European Research Council of how to enhance photosynthesis. The light reactions of photosynthesis in individual phototrophic species use only a fraction of the solar spectrum, and high light intensities can impair and even damage the process. In consequence, expanding the solar spectrum and enhancing the overall energy capacity of the process, while developing resilience to stresses imposed by high light intensities, could have a strong positive impact on food and energy production. So far, the complexity of the photosynthetic machinery has largely prevented improvements by conventional approaches. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop concepts to redesign the light‐harvesting and photochemical capacity of photosynthesis, as well as to establish new model systems and toolkits for the next generation of photosynthesis researchers. The overall objective of PhotoRedesign is to reconfigure the photosynthetic light reactions so they can harvest and safely convert energy from an expanded solar spectrum. To this end, a variety of synthetic biology approaches, including de novo design, will combine the attributes of photosystems from different photoautotrophic model organisms, namely the purple bacterium Rhodobacter sphaeroides, the cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 and the plant Arabidopsis thaliana. In parallel, adaptive laboratory evolution will be applied to improve the capacity of reimagined organisms to cope with enhanced input of solar energy, particularly in high and fluctuating light.

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“…Due to several issues associated with the C3 pathway, the maximum photosynthesis rates commonly observed among C3 species are generally lower than those of C4 ones. Although the core mechanisms of photosynthesis are highly conserved [13,14], natural variation in photosynthesis rates has been observed for major crops such as wheat [15], rice [16,17], maize [18], soybean [19], sorghum [20], as well as for the model species Arabidopsis thaliana [21,22]. Much higher levels of variation can be expected in other species that are more ecologically specialized [23].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The genome sequence ofHirschfeldia incana, a species with high photosynthetic light-use efficiency

Garassino

Wijfjes

Boesten

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Photosynthesis is a biophysical and biochemical process that plays a key role in sustaining plant and human life, being the first step in the production of energy-rich molecules and oxygen in the biosphere. Improving the photosynthetic capacity of agricultural crops is highly desirable to increase their yields. While the core mechanisms of photosynthesis are highly conserved, certainly in higher plants, plants that can maintain a high photosynthetic light-use efficiency at high irradiance are exceptional and may be useful to understand and improve high irradiance photosynthesis of crops. One such exceptional species is Hirschfeldia incana, a member of the well-studied Brassicaceae family that is easy to grow under standard laboratory conditions, providing an excellent resource for studying the genetic and physiological basis of this trait. Here, we present a reference assembly of H. incana and affirm its high photosynthetic efficiency relative to the Brassicaceae species Brassica rapa, Brassica nigra, and Arabidopsis thaliana. We estimate that it diverged from B. rapa and B. nigra 10-11 million years ago and that its genome has diversified from that of the latter two species through large chromosomal rearrangements, species-specific transposon activity, and differential retention of duplicated genes. Genes present at copy numbers different from B. rapa and B. nigra include those involved in photosynthesis and/or abiotic stress, which may mediate the high photosynthetic efficiency of H. incana. We expect the reference assembly of H. incana to be a valuable genomic resource for identifying ways to enhance photosynthetic rates in crop species.

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Thawing out frozen metabolic accidents

Cited by 11 publications

References 84 publications

Nonenzymatic Metabolic Reactions and Life’s Origins

Nonenzymatic Metabolic Reactions and Life’s Origins

Redesigning the photosynthetic light reactions to enhance photosynthesis – the PhotoRedesign consortium

The genome sequence ofHirschfeldia incana, a species with high photosynthetic light-use efficiency

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