Structures, Functions, and Mechanisms of Filament Forming Enzymes: A Renaissance of Enzyme Filamentation

TL;DR

This review highlights recent advances in understanding enzyme filamentation, emphasizing its structural, regulatory, and biological roles across various enzymes, and compares these mechanisms to the SgrAI system.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive summary of enzyme filament structures, functions, and mechanisms, emphasizing recent discoveries and their biological significance.

Findings

Enzyme filamentation plays a crucial regulatory role in biology.

Structural details of enzyme filaments reveal mechanisms of regulation.

Comparison with SgrAI system highlights unique and shared features.

Abstract

Filament formation by non-cytoskeletal enzymes has been known for decades, yet only relatively recently has its wide-spread role in enzyme regulation and biology come to be appreciated. This comprehensive review summarizes what is known for each enzyme confirmed to form filamentous structures in vitro, and for the many that are known only to form large self-assemblies within cells. For some enzymes, studies describing both the in vitro filamentous structures and cellular self-assembly formation are also known and described. Special attention is paid to the detailed structures of each type of enzyme filament, as well as the roles the structures play in enzyme regulation and in biology. Where it is known or hypothesized, the advantages conferred by enzyme filamentation are reviewed. Finally, the similarities, differences, and comparison to the SgrAI system are also highlighted.