The enolase superfamily includes enzymes that catalyse a wide variety of reactions and performing diverse roles in metabolism.
However, the reactions catalysed share the common chemical step of abstraction of a proton from a carbon adjacent to a carboxylic acid and a requirement of a divalent metal ion.
[1] This diversity of functions is in contrast to many families of enzymes whose members catalyse similar chemical reactions on different substrates.
The primary sequences of MR and MLE, approximately 25% identical, are related but significantly different; whereas their three-dimensional structures are similar.
The enzyme enolase has a more distant, but nevertheless clear, relationship to MLE and MR.