Characterization of the Thioredoxin System of Methanosarcina Mazei
Characterization of the Thioredoxin System of Methanosarcina mazei Usha Loganathan Thesis submitted to the faculty of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science In Biological Sciences Committee: Dr. Biswarup Mukhopadhyay, Chair Dr. David L. Popham, Co-Chair Dr. Birgit Scharf December 1, 2014 Blacksburg, Virginia Key words: Methane, fuel, greenhouse gas, Methanogen, Archaea, Methanosarcina mazei, thioredoxin, NADPH thioredoxin reductase, ferredoxin thioredoxin reductase, oxidative stress, redox regulation. Copyright 2014, Usha Loganathan Characterization of the thioredoxin system of Methanosarcina mazei Usha Loganathan ABSTRACT Thioredoxin (Trx) and thioredoxin reductase (TrxR) along with an electron donor form a thioredoxin system. Such systems are widely distributed among the organisms belonging to the three domains of life. It is one of the major disulfide reducing systems, which provides electrons to several enzymes, such as ribonucleotide reductase, methionine sulfoxide reductase and glutathione peroxidase to name a few. It also plays an important role in combating oxidative stress and redox regulation of metabolism. Trx is a small redox protein, about 12 kDa in size, with an active site motif of Cys-X-X-Cys. The reduction of the disulfide in Trx is catalyzed by TrxR. Two types of thioredoxin reductases are known, namely NADPH thioredoxin reductase (NTR) with NADPH as the electron donor and ferredoxin thioredxoin reductase (FTR) which depends on reduced ferredoxin as electron donor. Although NTR is widely distributed in the three domains of life, it is absent in some archaea, whereas FTRs are mostly found in plants, photosynthetic eukaryotes, cyanobacteria, and some archaea.
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