Fig. 2: GDGT biosynthesis pathway, intermediate, and side product.
From: Identification of a protein responsible for the synthesis of archaeal membrane-spanning GDGT lipids
a LC-MS extracted ion chromatograms of acid hydrolyzed extracts from heterologous expression strains showing that Tes (maeo_0574) can generate not only GDGT, but also the potential biosynthetic intermediate GTGT, and the side product macrocyclic archaeol. b Proposed GDGT biosynthesis pathway based on the Tes heterologous expression products. The chromatograms of all Tes homologs expression strains are shown in Supplementary Fig. 2, and mass spectra are shown in Supplementary Fig. 1. Notice that the double bonds on archaeol may be required for the condensation reaction (see discussion). Source data are provided as a Source Data file.
