The glycosomal ATP-dependent phosphofructokinase of Trypanosoma brucei must have evolved from an ancestral pyrophosphate-dependent enzyme.

Trypanosoma brucei contains an ATP-dependent phosphofructokinase (PFK), located in its glycosomes, which are peroxisome-like organelles sequestering the majority of its glycolytic enzymes. In this paper, we report the cloning and sequencing of the single-copy gene encoding this enzyme. Its amino-acid sequence is more similar to pyrophosphate (PPi)-dependent PFKs than to other ATP-dependent PFKs. A phylogenetic analysis suggests that the enzyme must have been derived from a PPi-dependent ancestral PFK, which changed its phospho-donor specificity during evolution. The enzyme is no longer capable of using PPi as phospho substrate, nor can it catalyze the reverse reaction as PPi-PFKs generally can. Moreover, the presence of a high pyrophosphatase activity in the cell renders it unlikely that PPi can function as free-energy source in present-day trypanosomes. It remains to be determined which mutations were responsible for the change in phospho-substrate specificity of the trypanosomatid PFK. As a result of its particular evolutionary history, the T. brucei PFK shows many structural differences, even at the active site, when compared with other ATP-dependent PFKs. These differences offer great potential for the structure-based design of trypanocidal drugs.