Fig. 4

Computational analysis and functional identification of the acetyl-phosphate synthase. a The formation of DHEThDP from F6P/X5P and glycolaldehyde. The solid arrows represent the formation mechanism of DHEThDP in ref. ³⁹; the dashed arrows indicate the predicted process using glycolaldehyde as substrate. b The identification of ACPS. The maximum-likelihood phylogenetic tree of the selected eight PKs was constructed by MEGA⁴⁷. The details of the selected PKs are present in the supplementary note and supplementary Fig. 10. The activity of each protein was detected by adding 0.5 mg mL⁻¹ enzyme and 10 mM glycolaldehyde. AcP acetyl phosphate, PK phosphoketolase, Production of AcP (µmol min⁻¹ mg⁻¹): the amount of AcP produced per mg enzyme per minute; Control: no enzyme was added in the reaction system; Error bars represent s.d. (standard deviation), n = 3. c The energy profile for DHEThDP formation process. IM1 and IM2 represent intermediate 1 and 2 during the formation process; TIM represents the tautomerized intermediate between IM1 and IM2; TS1 and TS2 represent the transition states. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.