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Promiscuity, Serendipity and Metabolic Innovation

The proteomes of most bacteria contain 1000-2000 enzymes, and each enzyme has an unknown number of promiscuous activities. Consequently, bacteria can access many thousands of catalytic activities when a new enzyme is needed to enhance fitness or even to enable survival. We are interested in the potential for evolution of novel metabolic pathways patched together from multiple promiscuous enzymes.