ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2015
Anaerobic biosynthesis of the lower ligand of vitamin B12.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 61 papers.
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Who cites it
61 citing papers in PubMed, 124 citations in OpenAlex.
- Novel chemistry and structural perspectives in vitamin BChemical science · 2026Review
- Use of upcycled biosolids for bioremediation of groundwater contaminated with chlorinated solvents.Environmental science and pollution research international · 2026Article
- The Corrinoid Model for Dissecting Microbial Community Interactions Across Scales.Annual review of microbiology · 2025Review
- Computational Strategies to Enhance Vitamin BCurrent microbiology · 2025Review
- Microbes display broad diversity in cobamide preferences.mSystems · 2025Article
- Laboratory evolution ofJournal of bacteriology · 2025Article
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- Corrinoid salvaging and cobamide remodeling in bacteria and archaea.Journal of bacteriology · 2024Review
- O-methyltransferase CbzMT catalyzes iterative 3,4-dimethylations for carbazomycin biosynthesis.Engineering microbiology · 2024Article
- Soil microbial community response to corrinoids is shaped by a natural reservoir of vitamin BbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Soil microbial community response to corrinoids is shaped by a natural reservoir of vitamin B12.The ISME journal · 2024Article
- Understanding the sources, function, and irreplaceable role of cobamides in organohalide-respiring bacteria.Frontiers in microbiology · 2024Review
- High qualityISME communications · 2024Article
- The coenzyme BMicrobial cell (Graz, Austria) · 2023Article
- Physiological potential and evolutionary trajectories of syntrophic sulfate-reducing bacterial partners of anaerobic methanotrophic archaea.PLoS biology · 2023Article
- Reprocessing of side-streams towards obtaining valuable bacterial metabolites.Applied microbiology and biotechnology · 2023Review
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- On the Evolutionary History of the Twenty Encoded Amino Acids.Chemistry (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany) · 2022Review
- Enhanced cobalamin biosynthesis inSynthetic and systems biotechnology · 2022Article
1 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Vitamin B12 (cobalamin) is required by humans and other organisms for diverse metabolic processes, although only a subset of prokaryotes is capable of synthesizing B12 and other cobamide cofactors. The complete aerobic and anaerobic pathways for the de novo biosynthesis of B12 are known, with the exception of the steps leading to the anaerobic biosynthesis of the lower ligand, 5,6-dimethylbenzimidazole (DMB). Here, we report the identification and characterization of the complete pathway for anaerobic DMB biosynthesis. This pathway, identified in the obligate anaerobic bacterium Eubacterium limosum, is composed of five previously uncharacterized genes, bzaABCDE, that together direct DMB production when expressed in anaerobically cultured Escherichia coli. Expression of different combinations of the bza genes revealed that 5-hydroxybenzimidazole, 5-methoxybenzimidazole, and 5-methoxy-6-methylbenzimidazole, all of which are lower ligands of cobamides produced by other organisms, are intermediates in the pathway. The bza gene content of several bacterial and archaeal genomes is consistent with experimentally determined structures of the benzimidazoles produced by these organisms, indicating that these genes can be used to predict cobamide structure. The identification of the bza genes thus represents the last remaining unknown component of the biosynthetic pathway for not only B12 itself, but also for three other cobamide lower ligands whose biosynthesis was previously unknown. Given the importance of cobamides in environmental, industrial, and human-associated microbial metabolism, the ability to predict cobamide structure may lead to an improved ability to understand and manipulate microbial metabolism.
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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.