Expanded phylogenies of canonical and non-canonical types of methionine adenosyltransferase reveal a complex history of these gene families in eukaryotes

Most eukaryotes possess the highly-conserved enzyme methionine adenosyltransferase (MAT) that produces S-adenosyl-l-methionine, a molecule essential to a variety of cellular processes. However, a recent study revealed that genomes of a very few eukaryote lineages encode a highly divergent type of MAT (called MATX), instead of the canonical MAT enzyme. Since MATX-containing eukaryotes are phylogenetically interspersed with MAT-containing...