New publication in "Journal of Biological Chemistry"

Previous work has shown that the human enzyme METTL9 adds a chemical modification known as 1-methylhistidine to specific protein sequences containing an HxH motif. This enzyme is not unique to humans; similar versions exist in many other organisms. In collaboration with researchers from the University of Oslo (Norway, in this work we tested METTL9-like enzymes from different species and found using peptide array and protein methlyation studies that these enzymes evolved distinct specificities in each species. These differences likely reflect the unique protein targets found in different organisms.