Sugar metabolic enzymes

Abstract

Although some of the enzymes involved in carbohydrate metabolism in thermophilic archaea have been identified from genomic data, much less is known about the metabolic pathways in thermophilic archaea than in bacteria such as Escherichia coli. This is because many gaps still remain in most of the metabolic pathways constructed using data predicted from the genomic sequences of thermophilic archaea. In order to understand carbohydrate metabolism in thermophilic archaea, the proteins predicted to be carbohydrate metabolic enzymes from their genomic data have been expressed in E. coli, and the expressed proteins have been functionally analyzed. These analyses have suggested that the activities of novel and not seen in mesophiles could be detected in the thermostable enzymes from archaea. These observations enable novel pathways to be constructed based on the actual activities or functions of the enzymes obtained from thermophilic archaea. Furthermore, these investigations have confirmed that functional genomics is a powerful tool for studying the detailed features of microorganisms