Novel links of molybdenum metabolism to other metabolic pathways

近年来，我们小组破译了植物（和人类）细胞中超过20种蛋白质参与钼代谢的基本原理。虽然单一蛋白的功能现在基本清楚，但我们对它们可能参与其他代谢途径的细节知之甚少，也不清楚钼代谢作为一个整体在已知邻近途径之外的遥远途径中的参与情况。最近，我们在拟南芥中描述了一个由8个钼辅助因子结合蛋白组成的家族。与此同时，这8种蛋白被一个日本小组描述为新的细胞分裂素激活蛋白（这些作者不知道这些蛋白在钼代谢中有功能）。因此，本项目的目的是双重的：(1)一组实验致力于更详细地研究钼辅因子结合蛋白与细胞分裂素生物合成的意想不到的联系。(2)利用组学技术，另一组实验旨在鉴定迄今为止未知的新的钼代谢伙伴蛋白和途径，从而有助于理解这一非常古老的代谢途径的作用。

In recent years, our group has deciphered the basic principles of molybdenum metabolism in plant (and human) cells with over 20 proteins participating. While the functions of the singular proteins are now basically clear, we have no detailed knowledge about their possible participation in other metabolic pathways nor about the participation of molybdenum metabolism as a whole in distant pathways beyond the already known neighbouring pathways. Recently we have described a family of eight molybdenum cofactor-binding proteins in Arabidopsis thaliana. Independently from us, at the same time these eight proteins were described by a Japanese group as novel cytokinin-activating proteins (these authors did not know that the proteins have a function in molybdenum metabolism). Therefore the aim of this project is two-fold: (1) One set of experiments is devoted to study in greater detail the unexpected link of the molybdenum cofactor-binding proteins to cytokinin biosynthesis.(2) Using omics technologies, the other set of experiments aims to identify novel partner proteins and pathways of molybdenum metabolism hitherto not known, thus contributing to the understanding of the role of this very old metabolic pathway.