ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Biology of Archaea
This article is part of the Research TopicMolecular Biology of Archaea - 2024View all 7 articles
Archaeal Heme a Synthase: Evolutionary Trajectory distinct from Bacterial Homologs
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Functional and Evolutionary Ecology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
- 2Division of Environmental Geosciences, Center for Microbiology and Environmental Systems Science, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
- 3Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica António Xavier, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal
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Hemes are iron-containing porphyrin compounds that play a crucial role in a wide array of biological processes. Heme a synthase (HAS) is a crucial enzyme that facilitates the biosynthesis of heme a, an essential heme variant that serves as a cofactor in heme-copper terminal oxidases and in some acidophilic archaea’s quinol reductases, such as the ba complex. Depending on the length, and presence or absence of cysteine residues in the periplasmic loop(s), HAS has been classified into different types. Our manuscript presents a large-scale analysis of the distribution and evolution of HAS in Archaea in comparison to Bacteria, revealing evolutionary patterns among the proposed subtypes, with types 1 and 2 diverging early. This work also underscores the complexity of HAS enzyme evolution, which reflects deep ancestral innovations as well as recent ecological pressures.
Keywords: iron-containing porphyrin compounds, Heme biosynthesis, evolution, cofactor, Tetrapyrroles
Received: 15 Sep 2025; Accepted: 19 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Karavaeva, Rampin, Zamarreño Beas, Saraiva and Sousa. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Val Karavaeva, val.karavaeva@univie.ac.at
Filipa L Sousa, filipa.sousa@univie.ac.at
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