ArticleTrends in biochemical sciences2015
An evolutionary biochemist's perspective on promiscuity.
Article in Trends in biochemical sciences, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 74 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
74 citing papers in PubMed, 175 citations in OpenAlex.
- A cloaked glutamate decarboxylase sustains the GABA shunt inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- An Automated Electrochemistry Platform for Accelerating the Characterization of Enzymatic Electrochemistry.ACS electrochemistry · 2026Article
- Biochemical parallels between catabolic pathways for lignin-associated aromatic dimers.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2026Review
- Structure-activity relationships in catalytic amyloids.Journal of inorganic biochemistry · 2026Article
- Transcription Factor Promiscuity Drives Regulatory Rewiring and Evolvability in Gene Networks in Bacteria.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Article
- Multifaceted Small Molecules as Enzyme Modulators: Cases of Drug Discovery/Repurposing Illustrating Nature's Pragmatism.BioMed research international · 2026Review
- Discovery and engineering of bifunctional enzymes for lignocellulose degradation: Metagenomic and computational approaches.Biotechnology reports (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2025Review
- Limitations of current machine learning models in predicting enzymatic functions for uncharacterized proteins.G3 (Bethesda, Md.) · 2025Article
- From Binding to Catalysis: Emergence of a Rudimentary Enzyme Conferring Intrinsic Antibiotic Resistance.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- AJournal of bacteriology · 2025Article
- Article
- Multiple transitions to high l-DOPA 4,5-dioxygenase activity reveal molecular pathways to convergent betalain pigmentation in Caryophyllales.The New phytologist · 2025Article
- How enzyme functions evolve: genetic, structural, and kinetic perspectives.Biophysical reviews · 2025Review
- Protein-constrained models pinpoints the role of underground metabolism in robustness of metabolic phenotypes.iScience · 2025Article
- Balancing G protein selectivity and efficacy in the adenosine ANature chemical biology · 2025Article
- Current and future perspectives for enhancing our understanding of the evolution of plant metabolism.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Nucleoside Phosphorylases make N7-xanthosine.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Analysing a Group of Homologous BAHD Enzymes Provides Insights into the Evolutionary Transition of Rosmarinic Acid Synthases from Hydroxycinnamoyl-CoA:Shikimate/Quinate Hydroxycinnamoyl Transferases.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Proteomics and Metabolomics Analysis Reveal the Regulation Mechanism of Linoleate Isomerase Activity and Function inACS omega · 2024Article
- MultifacetedProtDB: a database of human proteins with multiple functions.Nucleic acids research · 2024Article
14 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
1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Evolutionary biochemists define enzyme promiscuity as the ability to catalyze secondary reactions that are physiologically irrelevant, either because they are too inefficient to affect fitness or because the enzyme never encounters the substrate. Promiscuous activities are common because evolution of a perfectly specific active site is both difficult and unnecessary; natural selection ceases when the performance of a protein is 'good enough' that it no longer affects fitness. Although promiscuous functions are accidental and physiologically irrelevant, they are of great importance because they provide opportunities for the evolution of new functions in nature and in the laboratory, as well as targets for therapeutic drugs and tools for a wide range of technological applications.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.