ArticleThe Plant cell2023
The evolution of strictly monofunctional naphthoquinol C-methyltransferases is vital in cyanobacteria and plastids.
Article in The Plant cell, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 4 citations in OpenAlex.
- From Isoprene Units to Polyprenols and Dolichols: 70 Years of Polyisoprenoid Biosynthesis Research.Cell biochemistry and biophysics · 2026Review
- Vitamin K in photosynthetic organisms.Planta · 2026Review
- Quinol C-methyltransferases from extant species of early cyanobacterial lineages shed light on the emergence of plastoquinone in oxygenic phototrophs.Photosynthesis research · 2025Article
- A novel quinone biosynthetic pathway illuminates the evolution of aerobic metabolism.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
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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
Prenylated quinones are membrane-associated metabolites that serve as vital electron carriers for respiration and photosynthesis. The UbiE (EC 2.1.1.201)/MenG (EC 2.1.1.163) C-methyltransferases catalyze pivotal ring methylations in the biosynthetic pathways of many of these quinones. In a puzzling evolutionary pattern, prokaryotic and eukaryotic UbiE/MenG homologs segregate into 2 clades. Clade 1 members occur universally in prokaryotes and eukaryotes, excluding cyanobacteria, and include mitochondrial COQ5 enzymes required for ubiquinone biosynthesis; Clade 2 members are specific to cyanobacteria and plastids. Functional complementation of an Escherichia coli ubiE/menG mutant indicated that Clade 1 members display activity with both demethylbenzoquinols and demethylnaphthoquinols, independently of the quinone profile of their original taxa, while Clade 2 members have evolved strict substrate specificity for demethylnaphthoquinols. Expression of the gene-encoding bifunctional Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) COQ5 in the cyanobacterium Synechocystis or its retargeting to Arabidopsis plastids resulted in synthesis of a methylated variant of plastoquinone-9 that does not occur in nature. Accumulation of methylplastoquinone-9 was acutely cytotoxic, leading to the emergence of suppressor mutations in Synechocystis and seedling lethality in Arabidopsis. These data demonstrate that in cyanobacteria and plastids, co-occurrence of phylloquinone and plastoquinone-9 has driven the evolution of monofunctional demethylnaphthoquinol methyltransferases and explains why plants cannot capture the intrinsic bifunctionality of UbiE/MenG to simultaneously synthesize their respiratory and photosynthetic quinones.
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