Acetogenesis and the Wood-Ljungdahl Pathway of CO2 Fixation

By S. Ragsdale, Elizabeth Pierce. Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, 2008

1,213 citations recorded by the source corpus.

I. Summary Conceptually, the simplest way to synthesize an organic molecule is to construct it one carbon at a time. The Wood-Ljungdahl pathway of CO2 fixation involves this type of stepwise process. The biochemical events that underlie the condensation of two one-carbon units to form the two-carbon compound, acetate, have intrigued chemists, biochemists, and microbiologists for many decades. We begin this review with a description of the biology of acetogenesis. Then, we provide a short history of the important discoveries that have led to the identification of the key components and steps of this usual mechanism of CO and CO2 fixation. In this historical perspective, we have included reflections that hopefully will sketch the landscape of the controversies, hypotheses, and opinions that led to the key experiments and discoveries. We then describe the properties of the genes and enzymes involved in the pathway and conclude with a section describing some major questions that remain unanswered.

Subfields: Biochemistry, Inorganic Chemistry, Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/38e7a749b9615c99464e877714b3591e4f512a0e

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Citations in the corpus

The role of short-chain fatty acids in the interplay between gut microbiota and diet in cardio-metabolic health (2021, background): “At the same time, acetyl-CoA is the substrate to obtain acetate.(82)”
Beyond the Calvin cycle: autotrophic carbon fixation in the ocean. (2011, background): “The reduction of CO2 to the methyl group is accomplished by a series of enzymes, most of which are also unique for this pathway (Ljungdahl 1986, Ragsdale & Pierce 2008).”
7 Aerobic Methylotrophic Prokaryotes (2013, background): “Although many anaerobic methylotrophic microbes are known, such as methanotrophic archaea (Knittel and Boetius 2009), methanoland methylamine-utilizing methanogenic archaea (Thauer 1998), and methylotrophic clostridia (Ragsdale and Pierce 2008), this chapter will cover only the aerobic methylotrophs”
Microbial electron transport and energy conservation – the foundation for optimizing bioelectrochemical systems (2015, background): “Under physiological conditions in acetogens, however, Fds are usually >90% reduced and therefore reported to be able to catalyze reducing reactions at redox potentials as low as –500 mV (Buckel and Thauer, 2013; Hess et al., 2013).”
From Dietary Fiber to Host Physiology: Short-Chain Fatty Acids as Key Bacterial Metabolites. (2016, positive): “One of the major SCFAs, acetate, can be produced from pyruvate by many gut bacteria either via acetyl-CoA or via the Wood-Ljungdahl pathway in which acetate is synthesized via two branches: (1) the C1-body branch (also known as Eastern branch) via reduction of CO2 to formate and (2) the carbon monox”
Short-Chain Fatty-Acid-Producing Bacteria: Key Components of the Human Gut Microbiota (2023, background): “Acetogenesis is the production of acetate, mediated by homoacetogenic bacteria, which can use both H2 and CO2, while the carbon-fixation pathway produces acetate directly from CO2 [66,82,83].”
Ecological Aspects of the Distribution of Different Autotrophic CO2 Fixation Pathways (2011, background): “reductive acetyl coenzyme A (acetyl-CoA) pathway (25, 78, 80)”
Microbiota metabolite short chain fatty acids, GCPR, and inflammatory bowel diseases (2016, background): “In general, C2 can be formed from pyruvate via acetyl-CoA or Wood–Ljungdahl pathway [13].”