Professor Antoine Danchin
Member of the French Academy of Sciences
Professor extraordinary, Institute of Cardiometabolism and Nutrition
Paris, France

Date: Friday, 23-November-2018
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Venue: Seminar Room 6, LG1/F, Laboratory Block,
Faculty of Medicine Building,
21 Sassoon Road, Pokfulam, Hong Kong

Summary:
Methionine is essential for life. Its chemistry makes it fragile in the presence of oxygen. Aerobic living organisms have selected a salvage pathway (the MSP) that uses dioxygen to regenerate methionine, associated to a ratchet-like step that prevents methionine back degradation. The canonical MSP evolved from ancestors that used both predecessors of ribulose bisphophate carboxylase oxygenase (RuBisCO) and methanethiol in intermediate steps. Subsequently it strictly depended on oxygen. This makes it dispensable in cancer cells. Professor Danchin’s group document how these likely promiscuous pathways were also used to metabolise the omnipresent by-products of S-adenosylmethionine radical enzymes as well as the aromatic and isoprene skeleton of quinone electron acceptors.

ALL ARE WELCOME