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Updated: Aug 17, 2026

Metabolic Pathway Confirmation and Discovery Through 13C-labeling of Proteinogenic Amino Acids
Published on: January 26, 2012
Biochemical pathways in prokaryotes can be traced backward through evolutionary time
1Department of Biological Sciences, State University of New York, Binghamton.
Abstract:
For the first time, a credible prokaryotic phylogenetic tree is being assembled by Woese and others using quantitative sequence analysis of oligonucleotides in the highly conservative rRNA. This provides an evolutionary scale against which the evolutionary steps that led to the arrangement and regulation of contemporary biochemical pathways can be measured. This paper presents an emerging evolutionary picture of aromatic amino acid biosynthesis within a large superfamily assemblage of prokaryotes that is sufficiently developed to illustrate a new perspective that will be applicable to many other biochemical pathways.
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