ArticleNature2014
Sulphoglycolysis in Escherichia coli K-12 closes a gap in the biogeochemical sulphur cycle.
Article in Nature, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 73 papers.
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Who cites it
73 citing papers in PubMed, 152 citations in OpenAlex.
- Sulfide dynamics at the gut-microbiota interface: diet, oxygen and redox interplay.Gut microbes · 2026Review
- A systems-level atlas of carbon-response transcriptional states inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Structural and mechanistic basis of sulfolytic C-S bond cleavage by an Fe(ii)/α-ketoglutarate-dependent sulfoquinovose dioxygenase.Chemical science · 2026Article
- The return of metabolism: biochemistry and physiology of glycolysis.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- Studying organosulfonate metabolism in southern Russia chernozem soil microbial community: ubiquity of the desulfonation pathways and possible mixotrophy in common soil heterotrophs.Archives of microbiology · 2026Article
- Widespread marine and freshwater distributions of active sulfoquinovose-degrading bacteria.The ISME journal · 2026Article
- Sulfoquinovose degradation by cow rumen microbiota.The ISME journal · 2026Article
- Bacterial sulfoquinovose cycling across aquatic ecosystems.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2026Review
- Advances in microbial sulfoquinovose catabolism.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Review
- Identification of theMicrobiology (Reading, England) · 2025Article
- Sulfoquinovose Catabolism inInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2025Article
- Article
- Sulfoquinovose is exclusively metabolized by the gut microbiota and degraded differently in mice and humans.Microbiome · 2025Article
- Quantifying the intra- and inter-species community interactions in microbiomes by dynamic covariance mapping.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Structure, kinetics, and mechanism of Pseudomonas putida sulfoquinovose dehydrogenase, the first enzyme in the sulfoglycolytic Entner-Doudoroff pathway.The Biochemical journal · 2025Article
- Diagnosing and engineering gut microbiomes.EMBO molecular medicine · 2024Review
- Study of sulfoglycolysis iniScience · 2024Article
- Article
- Phylogeny and structural modeling of the transcription factor CsqR (YihW) from Escherichia coli.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Enantioselective transformation of phytoplankton-derived dihydroxypropanesulfonate by marine bacteria.The ISME journal · 2024Article
13 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Sulphoquinovose (SQ, 6-deoxy-6-sulphoglucose) has been known for 50 years as the polar headgroup of the plant sulpholipid in the photosynthetic membranes of all higher plants, mosses, ferns, algae and most photosynthetic bacteria. It is also found in some non-photosynthetic bacteria, and SQ is part of the surface layer of some Archaea. The estimated annual production of SQ is 10,000,000,000 tonnes (10 petagrams), thus it comprises a major portion of the organo-sulphur in nature, where SQ is degraded by bacteria. However, despite evidence for at least three different degradative pathways in bacteria, no enzymic reaction or gene in any pathway has been defined, although a sulphoglycolytic pathway has been proposed. Here we show that Escherichia coli K-12, the most widely studied prokaryotic model organism, performs sulphoglycolysis, in addition to standard glycolysis. SQ is catabolised through four newly discovered reactions that we established using purified, heterologously expressed enzymes: SQ isomerase, 6-deoxy-6-sulphofructose (SF) kinase, 6-deoxy-6-sulphofructose-1-phosphate (SFP) aldolase, and 3-sulpholactaldehyde (SLA) reductase. The enzymes are encoded in a ten-gene cluster, which probably also encodes regulation, transport and degradation of the whole sulpholipid; the gene cluster is present in almost all (>91%) available E. coli genomes, and is widespread in Enterobacteriaceae. The pathway yields dihydroxyacetone phosphate (DHAP), which powers energy conservation and growth of E. coli, and the sulphonate product 2,3-dihydroxypropane-1-sulphonate (DHPS), which is excreted. DHPS is mineralized by other bacteria, thus closing the sulphur cycle within a bacterial community.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.