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Abstract

For a long time, our understanding of metabolism has been dominated by
the idea of biochemical unity, i.e., that the central reaction sequences
in metabolism are universally conserved between all forms of life.
However, biochemical research in the last decades has revealed a
surprising diversity in the central carbon metabolism of different
microorganisms. Here, we will embrace this biochemical diversity and
explain how genetic redundancy and functional degeneracy cause the
diversity observed in central metabolic pathways, such as glycolysis,
autotrophic CO2 fixation, and acetyl-CoA assimilation. We conclude that
this diversity is not the exception, but rather the standard in
microbiology.