Journal News

JBC: A phospholipid pathway from plants to parasites

Sasha Mushegian
June 1, 2018

Findings by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis may aid in the development of therapies to treat parasitic infections, including malaria, and may help plant scientists one day produce hardier crops. The research team’s work was published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

A study explains how structures of Arabidopsis phosphoethanolamine methyltransferase, or PMT, (left) are evolutionarily related to PMT sequences from different organisms. Phosphatidylcholine (right) is PMT's product. Courtesy of Soon Goo Lee and Joseph JezCholine is an essential nutrient that we get from certain foods, including eggs, meat, leafy greens and nuts. The human body converts choline into phosphocholine, or pCho, which it in turn converts into (among other essential building blocks) phosphatidylcholine, or PtdCho, a component of cell membranes. Plants can’t acquire the nutrient from the environment and so must synthesize pCho from scratch. The biochemical pathway plants use to synthesize pCho also is found in nematodes and the malaria parasite Plasmodium.

In plants, the enzymatic reaction that produces pCho is essential for normal function and for responding to stresses. Plant pCho is converted into PtdCho, which builds membranes that can adjust their rigidity in response to temperature changes. pCho also gets converted into molecules that help plants survive high salt. The enzymes that produce plant pCho are called phosphoethanolamine methyltransferases, or PMTs.

Soon Goo Lee, a postdoctoral research fellow at Washington University in the lab of Joseph Jez (a JBC associate editor), has been fascinated by PMTs in both plants and parasites for many years.

“Understanding the PMT enzyme is key to engineer plants with improved stress tolerance and enhanced nutrients,” Lee said.

Since the PMT-catalyzed pathway is found in parasites but not humans, Lee and Jez’s team is looking for inhibitors of this enzyme to treat diseases caused by these parasites.

The new study explains that PMTs of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana share core features of PMTs from parasites, with almost identical structure at the active site. But the plant PMTs are roughly twice as large as the parasite ones, with large sections that can rearrange themselves to carry out multiple chemical reactions.

The three PMT types in the plant — which were thought to carry out the same function — actually appear to play different roles depending on where they are found in the plant. Plant growth experiments showed that one type of PMT was essential for root development and salt tolerance, whereas the other two had no effect on roots and instead seemed to be found primarily in leaves.

In the long run, this big-picture view of PMTs in different organisms offers routes to engineer enzymes with different functions. “I love these kinds of stories,” Lee said, “where I can look from the atomic (structure) to the physiological level to explain why these enzymes have different forms and how they work.”

Enjoy reading ASBMB Today?

Become a member to receive the print edition four times a year and the digital edition weekly.

Learn more
Sasha Mushegian

Sasha Mushegian is a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University. Follow her on Twitter.

Get the latest from ASBMB Today

Enter your email address, and we’ll send you a weekly email with recent articles, interviews and more.

Latest in Science

Science highlights or most popular articles

Scientists around the world report millions of new discoveries every year
Essay

Scientists around the world report millions of new discoveries every year

Nov. 24, 2024

Science is a collaborative endeavor, and international teams have contributed to a huge rise in scientific output.

Beneficial gut microbe has surprising metabolic capabilities
News

Beneficial gut microbe has surprising metabolic capabilities

Nov. 23, 2024

WashU researchers’ mouse study of therapeutic food for malnourished children shows a new gut bacterial enzyme's wide-ranging functions.

Transforming learning through innovation and collaboration
Award

Transforming learning through innovation and collaboration

Nov. 22, 2024

Neena Grover will receive the William C. Rose Award for Exemplary Contributions to Education at the 2025 ASBMB Annual Meeting, April 12–15 in Chicago.

From the journals: JBC
Journal News

From the journals: JBC

Nov. 22, 2024

Prefoldins participate in parasite pathology. Protein modifications coordinate in DNA repair. Nucleotide analog blocks viral RNA polymerases. Read about recent papers in the JBC on these topics.

Guiding grocery carts to shape healthy habits
Award

Guiding grocery carts to shape healthy habits

Nov. 21, 2024

Robert “Nate” Helsley will receive the Walter A. Shaw Young Investigator in Lipid Research Award at the 2025 ASBMB Annual Meeting, April 12–15 in Chicago.

Quantifying how proteins in microbe and host interact
Journal News

Quantifying how proteins in microbe and host interact

Nov. 20, 2024

“To develop better vaccines, we need new methods and a better understanding of the antibody responses that develop in immune individuals,” author Johan Malmström said.