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Biological chemistry

Enzymes line up for assembly

Nature volume 448, pages 755–756 (2007)Cite this article

Many enzymes have a series of catalytic sites, lined up like beads on a string. A previously unknown link in one of these molecular assembly lines involves an unexpected approach to a common biochemical reaction.

Nearly 100 years ago, Henry Ford demonstrated the full strength of economist Adam Smith's insights into productivity and the division of labour when he established the first moving assembly line. By shuttling partially constructed cars mechanically from one worker to the next, each performing a single specific task, Ford's assembly line could issue a new Model T every three minutes. This manufacturing method provided the foundation of modern mass production. But nature employed much the same approach for constructing molecules long before humans existed to ponder questions of economy and efficiency. On page 824 of this issue, Walsh and colleagues1 identify a previously unrecognized link in one such biological assembly line — an enzyme that could some day be exploited by chemists to modify complex, naturally occurring compounds.

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Figure 1: Assembly-line logic in biosynthetic enzymes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nicholas M. Llewellyn and Jonathan B. Spencer are in the Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, Lensfield Road, Cambridge CB2 1EW, UK. jbs20@cam.ac.uk,

    Nicholas M. Llewellyn & Jonathan B. Spencer

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  1. Nicholas M. Llewellyn
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  2. Jonathan B. Spencer
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Llewellyn, N., Spencer, J. Enzymes line up for assembly. Nature 448, 755–756 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/448755a

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