Success more than after 10 years after its discovery

Focusing on the gene context rather than amino acid sequence similarity

A group of researchers, including Waseda University’s Professor Kuniki Kino and Junior researcher Ryotaro Hara, became the first ever to prove that aconitase x catalyzes the dehydration of cis-3-hydroxy-L-proline to Δ1-pyrroline-2-carboxylate. Aconitase x was the only protein in the aconitase superfamily whose function was not explained. in the research, the team focused on the gene context of the bacterial genome rather than the amino acid sequence similarity to estimate the potential substrate. Furthermore, the properties shown by aconitase x were found to be significantly different form other aconitase superfamily members.

Learning more about functions of unknown proteins help understand biological evolution and how biological systems such as metabolic pathways have been formed, and this research progresses these efforts.

A paper on this research was published in Nature Publishing Group’s online science magazine Scientific Reports on December 8.

Paper information

• Magazine: Scientific Reports 6:38720 (2016), DOI: 10.1038/srep38720
• Title: Functional characterization of aconitase X as a cis-3-hydroxy-L-proline dehydratase.
• Authors: Seiya Watanabe^1,2,3, Kunihiko Tajima⁴, Satoshi Fujii⁵, Fumiyasu Fukumori⁶, Ryotaro Hara⁷, Rio Fukuda², Mao Miyazaki², Kuniki Kino^7,8, Yasuo Watanabe^1,2

¹ Department of Bioscience, Graduate School of Agriculture, Ehime University, Ehime, Japan
² Faculty of Agriculture, Ehime University, Ehime, Japan
³ Center for Marine Environmental Studies (CMES), Ehime University, Ehime, Japan
⁴ Department of Bio-molecular Engineering, Graduate School of Science and Technology, Kyoto Institute of Technology, Kyoto, Japan
⁵ Faculty of Frontiers of Innovative Research in Science and Technology (FIRST), Konan University, Kobe, Japan
⁶ Faculty of Food and Nutritional Sciences, Toyo University, Gunma, Japan
⁷ Research Institute for Science and Engineering, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan
⁸ Department of Applied Chemistry, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan