Transmishion electron microscope (TEM) image of a Acidianus archaeon by George Rice
Now and then you stumble upon a straightforward self-explaining stereotypical paper. In this case it bears the clear name “Evolution of a new enzyme for carbon disulphide conversion by an acidothermophilic archaeon”(Smeulders et al., 2011) and written by the Microbiology department of Radboud University Nijmegen in The Netherlands. It extensively describes how a hydrolase (which converts CS2 to H2S and CO2) was likely to be evolved from a β-carbonic anhydrase (which converts CO2 in HCO3–). But the work preceding this conclusion and the enzyme itself are actually much more interesting…