Global distribution of isoprenoid quinones across Bacteria
Abstract
Isoprenoid quinones are redox-active lipids essential for numerous cellular processes, including ATP synthesis via electron transport chains. They are found across all domains of life. Their diversity among microbial taxa has established them as chemotaxonomic markers, while recent studies have linked quinone repertoire variations to metabolic adaptations, and have identified novel quinone types. Despite this renewed interest, a comprehensive overview of quinone distribution across Bacteria is missing. Here, we systematically annotated quinone biosynthetic pathways for major quinones (ubiquinone, rhodoquinone, plastoquinone, and menaquinone) across 26,264 high-quality bacterial genomes. We also text-mined quinone data from over 6,000 species in published abstracts to validate our genomic annotations while compiling valuable information on quinone chains. Mapping these data onto a phylogenetic framework provides the most extensive synthesis of quinone distribution in Bacteria to date. Our analysis reveals an unexpectedly dynamic evolutionary history for the two menaquinone-producing pathways. Furthermore, the discovery and experimental validation of a deeply branching ubiquinone pathway in the phylum Desulfobacterota provide the first evidence of such a pathway outside the phylum Pseudomonadota , offering new insights into the nature of the ancestral ubiquinone biosynthetic route. Beyond these discoveries, the global overview of bacterial quinones distribution presented here paves the way for future investigations into quinone-associated biochemistry and physiology, including predicting quinone structural features from genomic data, exploring correlations between quinone structures and cellular traits, and studying quinone repertoire evolution in relation to microbial metabolic diversification.
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BibTeX
@article{chobert2026global,
title = {{Global distribution of isoprenoid quinones across Bacteria}},
author = {Sophie-Carole Chobert and Suraj Kanwar and Olivier Lerouxel and Nelle Varoquaux and Julie Michaud and Ludovic Pelosi and Fabien Pierrel and Sophie S. Abby},
journal = {mSystems},
year = {2026},
month = jul,
doi = {10.1128/msystems.01681-25},
url = {https://hal.science/hal-05747285v1},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Global distribution of isoprenoid quinones across Bacteria
AU - Sophie-Carole Chobert
AU - Suraj Kanwar
AU - Olivier Lerouxel
AU - Nelle Varoquaux
AU - Julie Michaud
AU - Ludovic Pelosi
AU - Fabien Pierrel
AU - Sophie S. Abby
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/07/01
JO - mSystems
DO - 10.1128/msystems.01681-25
UR - https://hal.science/hal-05747285v1
AB - Isoprenoid quinones are redox-active lipids essential for numerous cellular processes, including ATP synthesis via electron transport chains. They are found across all domains of life. Their diversity among microbial taxa has established them as chemotaxonomic markers, while recent studies have linked quinone repertoire variations to metabolic adaptations, and have identified novel quinone types. Despite this renewed interest, a comprehensive overview of quinone distribution across Bacteria is missing. Here, we systematically annotated quinone biosynthetic pathways for major quinones (ubiquinone, rhodoquinone, plastoquinone, and menaquinone) across 26,264 high-quality bacterial genomes. We also text-mined quinone data from over 6,000 species in published abstracts to validate our genomic annotations while compiling valuable information on quinone chains. Mapping these data onto a phylogenetic framework provides the most extensive synthesis of quinone distribution in Bacteria to date. Our analysis reveals an unexpectedly dynamic evolutionary history for the two menaquinone-producing pathways. Furthermore, the discovery and experimental validation of a deeply branching ubiquinone pathway in the phylum Desulfobacterota provide the first evidence of such a pathway outside the phylum Pseudomonadota , offering new insights into the nature of the ancestral ubiquinone biosynthetic route. Beyond these discoveries, the global overview of bacterial quinones distribution presented here paves the way for future investigations into quinone-associated biochemistry and physiology, including predicting quinone structural features from genomic data, exploring correlations between quinone structures and cellular traits, and studying quinone repertoire evolution in relation to microbial metabolic diversification.
SN - 2379-5077
ER -