Nature Middle East | House of Wisdom

Unknown metabolic pathway discovered in hardy Middle Eastern microbe

This is a guest post by Tony Scully, Nature Middle East’s subeditor

dead sea microbe.jpg

German scientists have identified a third pathway by which microorganisms digest carbon compounds in a microbe native to the Dead Sea in the Middle East.

Up to now, two pathways were known in invertebrates – the glyoxylate cycle and the ethylmalonyl-CoA pathway – that use acetyl-CoA to form the building blocks of sugar.

Haloarcula marismorui, a member of the domain Archaea, has adapted to live in the Dead Sea, which is bereft of fish and plant life owing to its high salt content. But the researchers realized the microbe lacked essential genes and enzymes used in both known pathways and figured the microbe must be using an as yet unknown way to metabolize carbon.

“We thought it would be interesting to study this organism in detail because it seemed like a new pathway,” Ivan Berg told Nature News of their discovery, published in Science.

This third pathway, dubbed the ‘methylaspartate cycle’, helps prevent the loss of cellular water through osmosis amongst other tricks that overcome the sea’s harsh conditions.

Rather than the microbe gradually accumulating random mutations to adapt to the harsh conditions of the Dead Sea, it seems to have borrowed salt-loving genes from ancient bacteria. The researchers reckon it’s pretty likely that other, unknown ways for invertebrates to make glucose are waiting to be discovered.

Read the full Nature News story here.

Read the full paper in Science here.

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