Small molecule functional discrimination of the kinases required for the microbial synthesis of threonine and isoleucine

The biosynthesis of l-threonine and l-isoleucine in bacteria and in fungi requires the action of 2 amino acid kinases: aspartate kinase and homoserine kinase. Although these kinases bind similar substrates and catalyze analogous phosphotransfer chemistry, they do not show high amino acid sequence homology. We show that despite this difference, both kinases form a ternary complex consisting of enzyme- adenosine triphosphate- amino acid to …