In-silico evidence of a pAO1 encoded pathway for the catabolism of tagatose derivatives in Arthrobacter nicotinovorans

Based on similarity searches, two putative pathways were previously described as being encoded by the pAO1 megaplasmid of Arthrobacter nicotinovorans: an almost fully established nicotine-degrading pathway and a yet unknown putative sugar-catabolic pathway. The general organization of the open reading frames (ORFs) of the latter indicated possible gene products as targets for docking experiments, aimed at identifying possible sugar substrates of this pathway. Homology modelling and docking results with the deduced proteins of three ORFs of the putative sugar catabolic pathway indicated D-tagatose-1,6-bisphosphate as a common ligand and thus as substrate of the pathway.