Abstract
Specialized metabolic pathways evolve from existing pathways, creating new functionality potentially boosting fitness. However, how these pathways are integrated into a pre-existing working and well-balanced metabolic system is unclear. They could be integrated to the system as a functional appendage, or they could be fully embedded into primary metabolism by establishing new biochemical and regulatory connections. A full integration into the primary metabolic system requires substantial system re-wiring and because of this complexity, the latter is often not experimentally pursued. New studies provide evidence that some specialized metabolic pathways are fully embedded in primary metabolism with extensive new regulatory and biochemical connections. This suggests, that we should consider whether other specialized metabolic pathways could be fully integrated rather than being simple appendages. In this mini review, we survey compelling evidence supporting that some specialized metabolic pathways are fully integrated and ask if these metabolites now act as de-facto primary metabolites?
| Originalsprog | Engelsk |
|---|---|
| Artikelnummer | 102173 |
| Tidsskrift | Current Opinion in Plant Biology |
| Vol/bind | 66 |
| ISSN | 1369-5266 |
| DOI | |
| Status | Udgivet - 2022 |
Bibliografisk note
Funding Information:This work is funded by the NSF-IOS 1754201 to RA and U.S. National Science Foundation awards IOS 020754 and MCB 1906486 to D.J.K, the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture hatch project no. CA–D–PLS–7033–H to D.J.K., and the Danish National Research Foundation grant no. DNRF99 to D.J.K. The authors wish to acknowledge Melody Kroll and Abou Yobi for assistance with editing the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Elsevier Ltd