Department of Earth System Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
Department of Structural Biology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
Environ Microbiol Rep. 2017 Oct;9(5):484-491. doi: 10.1111/1758-2229.12567. Epub 2017 Jul 21.
Knowledge of the molecular ecology and environmental determinants of ammonia-oxidizing organisms is critical to understanding and predicting the global nitrogen (N) and carbon cycles, but an incomplete biochemical picture hinders in vitro studies of N-cycling enzymes. Although an integrative structural and dynamic characterization at the atomic scale would advance our understanding of function tremendously, structural knowledge of key N-cycling enzymes from ecologically relevant ammonia oxidizers is unfortunately extremely limited. Here, we discuss the challenges and opportunities for examining the ecology of ammonia-oxidizing organisms, particularly uncultivated Thaumarchaeota, through (meta)genome-driven structural biology of the enzymes ammonia monooxygenase (AMO) and nitrite reductase (NirK).
了解氨氧化微生物的分子生态学和环境决定因素对于理解和预测全球氮（N）和碳循环至关重要，但不完全的生化图景阻碍了对 N 循环酶的体外研究。尽管在原子尺度上进行综合的结构和动态特征分析将极大地促进我们对功能的理解，但不幸的是，来自生态相关氨氧化菌的关键 N 循环酶的结构知识却极其有限。在这里，我们讨论了通过（宏）基因组驱动的氨单加氧酶（AMO）和亚硝酸盐还原酶（NirK）的酶的结构生物学来研究氨氧化微生物，特别是未培养的泉古菌的生态学的挑战和机遇。
