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Our ideas of protein function have undergone a marked transformation with the discovery of an aspect of enzyme evolution called "moonlighting." That is, a protein can acquire a second (moonlighting) function without concomitantly losing all or part of its original function. Mutations can enhance the moonlighting function without necessarily eliminating the ancestral function. This paper shows that even a very small protein is capable of moonlighting. This protein functions in two otherwise unrelated pathways of central metabolism. A surprise is that even bacteria that utilize a different version of one of these pathways retain the moonlighting ability.
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