ArticleThe Plant cell2013
Convergent evolution of polysaccharide debranching defines a common mechanism for starch accumulation in cyanobacteria and plants.
Article in The Plant cell, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 25 citations in OpenAlex.
- Solving the Insoluble: Regulation of α-Polyglucan Solubility and Functionality in Nature.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Noncatalytic functions of ISOAMYLASE 1 and 2 affect the proportion of insoluble and soluble α-polyglucans in maize.The Plant cell · 2025Article
- Interactions of separately conserved α-(1→6) glucosidases that participate in maize endosperm starch biosynthesis.Plant physiology · 2025Article
- Crystal Structure and Mutational Studies of Cyanobacterial Branching Enzymes Reveal the Structural Determinants of Reaction Product Specificity.Journal of applied glycoscience · 2025Article
- Orthologs of Branching Enzymes from Cyanobacteria Accumulating Distinct Types of α-Glucans Share Common Reaction Product Specificity.Journal of applied glycoscience · 2025Article
- A Review of Starch Biosynthesis in Relation to the Building Block-Backbone Model.International journal of molecular sciences · 2020Review
- Enhanced Nitrogen Fixation in aApplied and environmental microbiology · 2019Article
- Starch formation inside plastids of higher plants.Protoplasma · 2018Review
- Characterization of Function of the GlgA2 Glycogen/Starch Synthase in Cyanobacterium sp. Clg1 Highlights Convergent Evolution of Glycogen Metabolism into Starch Granule Aggregation.Plant physiology · 2016Article
- Article
- Altering the Structure of Carbohydrate Storage Granules in the Cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. Strain PCC 6803 through Branching-Enzyme Truncations.Journal of bacteriology · 2015Article
- Sequence variation, differential expression, and divergent evolution in starch-related genes among accessions of Arabidopsis thaliana.Plant molecular biology · 2015Article
- The future of starch bioengineering: GM microorganisms or GM plants?Frontiers in plant science · 2015Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
21 authors at 4 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Starch, unlike hydrosoluble glycogen particles, aggregates into insoluble, semicrystalline granules. In photosynthetic eukaryotes, the transition to starch accumulation occurred after plastid endosymbiosis from a preexisting cytosolic host glycogen metabolism network. This involved the recruitment of a debranching enzyme of chlamydial pathogen origin. The latter is thought to be responsible for removing misplaced branches that would otherwise yield a water-soluble polysaccharide. We now report the implication of starch debranching enzyme in the aggregation of semicrystalline granules of single-cell cyanobacteria that accumulate both glycogen and starch-like polymers. We show that an enzyme of analogous nature to the plant debranching enzyme but of a different bacterial origin was recruited for the same purpose in these organisms. Remarkably, both the plant and cyanobacterial enzymes have evolved through convergent evolution, showing novel yet identical substrate specificities from a preexisting enzyme that originally displayed the much narrower substrate preferences required for glycogen catabolism.
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