The Rise of Chemodiversity in Plants

Plants possess multifunctional and rapidly evolving specialized metabolic enzymes. Many metabolites do not appear to be immediately required for survival; nonetheless, many may contribute to maintaining population fitness in fluctuating and geographically dispersed environments. Others may serve no...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) 2012-06, Vol.336 (6089), p.1667-1670
Main Authors: Weng, Jing-Ke, Philippe, Ryan N., Noel, Joseph P.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biochemical pathways
Biochemistry
Biodiversity
Catalysis
Cellular metabolism
Dominance
Enzyme substrates
Enzymes
Evolution
Evolution, Molecular
Fitness
Fluctuation
Genetic mutation
Metabolism
Metabolites
Mutations
Plant biology
Plants - chemistry
Plants - metabolism
Promiscuity
Protein metabolism
REVIEWS & PERSPECTIVES
Survival
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Summary:Plants possess multifunctional and rapidly evolving specialized metabolic enzymes. Many metabolites do not appear to be immediately required for survival; nonetheless, many may contribute to maintaining population fitness in fluctuating and geographically dispersed environments. Others may serve no contemporary function but are produced inevitably as minor products by single enzymes with varying levels of catalytic promiscuity. The dominance of the terrestrial realm by plants likely mirrored expansion of specialized metabolism originating from primary metabolic pathways. Compared with their evolutionarily constrained counterparts in primary metabolism, specialized metabolic enzymes may be more tolerant to mutations normally considered destabilizing to protein structure and function. If this is true, permissiveness may partially explain the pronounced chemodiversity of terrestrial plants.
ISSN:0036-8075
1095-9203
DOI:10.1126/science.1217411