Crossing the lipid divide |
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Authors: | Christian Sohlenkamp |
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Institution: | Centro de Ciencias Genómicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico |
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Abstract: | Archaeal membrane lipids are structurally different from bacterial and eukaryotic membrane lipids, but little is known about the enzymes involved in their synthesis. In a recent study, Exterkate et al. identified and characterized a cardiolipin synthase from the archaeon Methanospirillum hungatei. This enzyme can synthesize archaeal, bacterial, and mixed archaeal/bacterial cardiolipin species from a wide variety of substrates, some of which are not even naturally occurring. This discovery could revolutionize synthetic lipid biology, being used to construct a variety of lipids with nonnatural head groups and mixed archaeal/bacterial hydrophobic chains. |
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Keywords: | cardiolipin bacterial membranes synthetic biology archaeal lipids cardiolipin synthase |
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