ArticleGeobiology2020
Reconstructing the evolutionary history of nitrogenases: Evidence for ancestral molybdenum-cofactor utilization.
Article in Geobiology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 53 papers.
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Who cites it
53 citing papers in PubMed, 121 citations in OpenAlex.
- Function, Structure, and Regulation of Nitrogen Fixation-like Metalloproteins for Nitrogen, Energy, Carbon, and Sulfur Metabolism.Chemical reviews · 2026Review
- A Proposed Complete-Cycle Mechanism for Conversion of NChembiochem : a European journal of chemical biology · 2026Article
- Abiotic sources of fixed nitrogen sustained early ecosystems for several hundred million years after the origin of life.Science advances · 2026Article
- Evolution-guided engineering of an ancient nitrogenase interface enhances enzyme activity and stability.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Biological use of molybdenum and tungsten stems back to 3.4 billion years ago.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Article
- Lowering the Mo limit for nitrogen fixation by Mo-nitrogenase.Communications earth & environment · 2026Article
- Ecological constraints and evolutionary trade-offs shape nitrogen fixation across habitats.ISME communications · 2026Article
- Nitrogen-fixing microbes gain genes in diverse types of living environments.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Article
- CryoEM-enabled visual proteomics reveals de novo structures of oligomeric protein complexes.Structure (London, England : 1993) · 2025Article
- The emergence of metabolisms through Earth history and implications for biospheric evolution.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Article
- Exploring diazotrophic diversity: unveiling Nif core distribution and evolutionary patterns in nitrogen-fixing organisms.BMC genomics · 2025Article
- Methylthio-alkane reductases use nitrogenase metalloclusters for carbon-sulfur bond cleavage.Nature catalysis · 2025Article
- NFEmbed: modeling nitrogenase activity via classification and regression with pretrained protein embeddings.Bioinformatics advances · 2025Article
- How nitrogenase enzymes have adapted structurally to Earth's environments over geological timescales.Journal of biosciences · 2025Article
- Iron-molybdenum cofactor synthesis by a thermophilic nitrogenase devoid of the scaffold NifEN.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Exploring the influence of atmospheric COApplied and environmental microbiology · 2024Article
- Co-evolution of early Earth environments and microbial life.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The nitrogenase metalloenzyme family, essential for supplying fixed nitrogen to the biosphere, is one of life's key biogeochemical innovations. The three forms of nitrogenase differ in their metal dependence, each binding either a FeMo-, FeV-, or FeFe-cofactor where the reduction of dinitrogen takes place. The history of nitrogenase metal dependence has been of particular interest due to the possible implication that ancient marine metal availabilities have significantly constrained nitrogenase evolution over geologic time. Here, we reconstructed the evolutionary history of nitrogenases, and combined phylogenetic reconstruction, ancestral sequence inference, and structural homology modeling to evaluate the potential metal dependence of ancient nitrogenases. We find that active-site sequence features can reliably distinguish extant Mo-nitrogenases from V- and Fe-nitrogenases and that inferred ancestral sequences at the deepest nodes of the phylogeny suggest these ancient proteins most resemble modern Mo-nitrogenases. Taxa representing early-branching nitrogenase lineages lack one or more biosynthetic nifE and nifN genes that both contribute to the assembly of the FeMo-cofactor in studied organisms, suggesting that early Mo-nitrogenases may have utilized an alternate and/or simplified pathway for cofactor biosynthesis. Our results underscore the profound impacts that protein-level innovations likely had on shaping global biogeochemical cycles throughout the Precambrian, in contrast to organism-level innovations that characterize the Phanerozoic Eon.
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