Ancient Enzymes

DNA/RNA-editing enzymes are widely used by biological organisms of all clades towards a diverse range of biological functions including metabolism, immunity and differentiation. However, the enzymes from most species remain uncharacterized and, in many species have remined totally unidentified. One of our goals is identify the DNA/RNA-editing enzyme genes and proteins in all species with sequenced or partially sequenced genomes. We work in collaboration with experts world-wide who focus on different stages of life evolution. Our goal is to characterize the genomics and transcriptomics of DNA/RNA-editing enzymes but we have a particular focus on their structure dynamics, enzyme activity characterization and structure:function evolution.

Representative publications in this area:

  1. Holland SJ, Berghuis LM, King JJ, Iyer L, Sikora K, Fifield H, Peter S, Quinlan EM, Fumiaki S, Prashant S, Trancoso I, Iwanami N, Temereva E, Strohmeier C, Kuratani S, Venkatesh B, Evanno G, Aravind L, Schorpp M, Larijani M*, Boehm T*. Expansions, diversification and inter-individual copy number variation of AID/APOBEC family cytidine deaminase genes in lampreys. Proc Natl Acad Sci, 2018. Apr 3;115(14):E3211-E3220 (*ML and TB co-senior authors)
  2. Quinlan EM, King JJ, Amemiya CT, Hsu E, Larijani M. Biochemical regulatory features of AID have remained conserved from lamprey to humans. Mol Cell. Biol.2017. Jul 17. pii: MCB.00077-17

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