title: New insights about enzyme evolution from large scale studies of sequence and structure relationships.
abstract: Understanding how enzymes have evolved offers clues about their structure-function relationships and mechanisms. Here, we describe evolution of functionally diverse enzyme superfamilies, each representing a large set of sequences that evolved from a common ancestor and that retain conserved features of their structures and active sites. Using several examples, we describe the different structural strategies nature has used to evolve new reaction and substrate specificities in each unique superfamily. The results provide insight about enzyme evolution that is not easily obtained from studies of one or only a few enzymes.
authors.affiliation: Departments of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences and University of California, San Francisco, California 94158-2330.
authors.forename: Shoshana D
authors.initials: SD
authors.lastname: Brown
authors.affiliation: Departments of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences and University of California, San Francisco, California 94158-2330; Departments of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, School of Pharmacy, and University of California, San Francisco, California 94158-2330; California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, University of California, San Francisco, California 94158-2330. Electronic address: babbitt@cgl.ucsf.edu.
authors.forename: Patricia C
authors.initials: PC
authors.lastname: Babbitt
mesh_terms: D055162:Biocatalysis; D020134:Catalytic Domain; D004798:Enzymes / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics*; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D006801:Humans; D010084:Oxidation-Reduction; D010802:Phylogeny; D020539:Sequence Analysis, Protein
chemical_list: D004798:Enzymes
keywords: Computational Biology; Enzyme; Enzyme Evolution; Enzyme Structure-Function Relationships; Enzyme Superfamily; Molecular Evolution; Multifunctional Enzyme; Networks; Protein Evolution