Peter C. Loewen of the University of Manitoba, Canada, and I (Martin G. Klotz) have worked out the evolutionary history of catalatic hydroperoxidases, which has been published in 2003 in Molecular Biology and Evolution 20: 1098-1112.

The paper presents the evolutionary realtionships of all known monofunctional heme catalases, bifunctional heme catalase-peroxidases and monofunctional non-heme catalases, and we have attempted to map the information obtained from the 3 molecular phylogenies on a taxonomic scheme that represents the evolution of species following a proposal by Cavalier-Smith.

The next step will be to map crystallographic features on the molecular phylogenies. To this end, Peter has managed to gather crystallographic data at below 2 Å for representatives in all three clades of the phylogentic tree of monofunctional heme catalase.