Brief Introduction

Although the mechanisms by which individual enzymes evolve are relatively well understood, individual enzymes rarely confer a physiological advantage on their own, and their biological importance is usually understandable only in the context of metabolism. In the earliest times of biotic evolution, the emergence of metabolic pathways allowed primitive organisms to become increasingly less-dependent on exogenous sources of organic compounds. Subsequently, the diversification of metabolism in various organismal lineages depended (and still depend) on a myriad of factors, including primarily the response to environmental constrains and the adaptation to different ecologic niches. This is well-exemplified by the pathways in secondary (specialized) metabolism, which typically produce molecules that interfere with the biology of other organisms (e.g., environmental competitors, hosts…). Other factors (such as the efficient integration between different branches of metabolism and the optimization of regulatory processes) also presumably contribute to the evolution of metabolic systems. The studies on the evolution of enzymes in the context of metabolic pathways, besides providing a better knowledge of metabolism itself and of life in general, may offer important insights to the technologies that rely on metabolic engineering.

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