ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2016
KdgF, the missing link in the microbial metabolism of uronate sugars from pectin and alginate.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 48 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
48 citing papers in PubMed, 102 citations in OpenAlex.
- A specific tripartite tricarboxylate transporter is involved in alginate utilization byApplied and environmental microbiology · 2026Article
- Alginate foraging is conserved in geographically and taxonomically distinct ruminant microbiomes.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Marine Vibrio Biocatalysts as Unique Green Transformation (GX) Tools at the Time to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).Current microbiology · 2026Review
- Dissecting a two-domain alginate lyase of family PL6 reveals a mechanistic basis for substrate specificity and enzyme activity.The Journal of biological chemistry · 2026Article
- Molecular evolution and diversity of isomerase-reductase clusters involved in the bacterial metabolism of glycosaminoglycans.mSphere · 2026Article
- Multimodular flavobacterial enzymes specialized in coordinated decomposition of cellulose and alginate in brown algal cell walls.The ISME journal · 2026Article
- Characterization of Alginate Utilization Strategy in a Novel MarineMarine drugs · 2025Article
- Recent Advances in Alginate Lyase Engineering for Efficient Conversion of Alginate to Value-Added Products.Microbial biotechnology · 2025Review
- Article
- Collaborative metabolic curation of an emerging model marine bacterium, Alteromonas macleodii ATCC 27126.PloS one · 2025Article
- Alginate oligosaccharide assimilation by gut microorganisms and the potential role in gut inflammation alleviation.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2024Article
- Metagenomic insights into the dynamic degradation of brown algal polysaccharides by kelp-associated microbiota.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2024Article
- Construction of synthetic anti-fouling consortia: fouling control effects and polysaccharide degradation mechanisms.Microbial cell factories · 2023Article
- Three alginate lyases provide a new gutApplied and environmental microbiology · 2023Article
- Engineering the Metabolic Landscape of Microorganisms for Lignocellulosic Conversion.Microorganisms · 2023Review
- A novel alginate lyase and its domain functions for the preparation of unsaturated monosaccharides.Applied microbiology and biotechnology · 2023Article
- Characterization of Multiple Alginate Lyases in a Highly Efficient Alginate-DegradingApplied and environmental microbiology · 2022Article
- A pathway for chitin oxidation in marine bacteria.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Article
- Production of 4-Deoxy-L-Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Uronates are charged sugars that form the basis of two abundant sources of biomass-pectin and alginate-found in the cell walls of terrestrial plants and marine algae, respectively. These polysaccharides represent an important source of carbon to those organisms with the machinery to degrade them. The microbial pathways of pectin and alginate metabolism are well studied and essentially parallel; in both cases, unsaturated monouronates are produced and processed into the key metabolite 2-keto-3-deoxygluconate (KDG). The enzymes required to catalyze each step have been identified within pectinolytic and alginolytic microbes; yet the function of a small ORF, kdgF, which cooccurs with the genes for these enzymes, is unknown. Here we show that KdgF catalyzes the conversion of pectin- and alginate-derived 4,5-unsaturated monouronates to linear ketonized forms, a step in uronate metabolism that was previously thought to occur spontaneously. Using enzyme assays, NMR, mutagenesis, and deletion of kdgF, we show that KdgF proteins from both pectinolytic and alginolytic bacteria catalyze the ketonization of unsaturated monouronates and contribute to efficient production of KDG. We also report the X-ray crystal structures of two KdgF proteins and propose a mechanism for catalysis. The discovery of the function of KdgF fills a 50-y-old gap in the knowledge of uronate metabolism. Our findings have implications not only for the understanding of an important metabolic pathway, but also the role of pectinolysis in plant-pathogen virulence and the growing interest in the use of pectin and alginate as feedstocks for biofuel production.
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.