Figure 6. Phylogeny and Sequence Alignment.

(A). A phylogenetic tree of thermoplasmatales based on 16 S rRNA. Organisms with no available DNA sequences are shown in grey. Environmental samples were excluded for clarity. (B) Mevalonate 3,5-bisphosphate decarboxylase homologs representing all 8 sequenced thermoplasmatales were aligned with mevalonate 5-phosphate decarboxylases (MMD), mevalonate 5-pyrophosphate decarboxylases (MPD), and the top Ta0893 BLASTp hits after thermoplasmatales. MBDs retain the Asp/Lys/Arg catalytic triad required for decarboxylation (red), but are missing both ATP binding residues (purple).