Protein adaptation in extremophiles: a story of sequence, structure and osmolytes

Abstract

Extremophiles are organisms that have optimal growth conditions in extreme temperature, pressure, acidity, salinity, or pH generally considered hostile for carbon-based life forms. Proteins have evolved to function in environments native to these different organisms. To understand how extremophiles have evolved their proteins we chose phosphoglycerate kinase (PGK), an essential enzyme in the glycolytic cycle from 6 different organisms. These were chosen to optimize for a variety of conditions across species, temperature and pressure optimal for their growth.