Catabolism of Pyrimidines in Yeast: A Tool to Understand Degradation of Anticancer Drugs |
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| Authors: | G Andersen A Merico O Björnberg B Andersen K D Schnackerz D Dobritzsch |
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| Institution: | 1. Cell- and Organism Biology , Lund University , Lund, Sweden;2. BioCentrum-DTU , Technical University of Denmark , Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark;3. Department of Biomolecular Sciences and Biotechnology , University of Milan , Milan, Italy;4. Cell- and Organism Biology , Lund University , Lund, Sweden;5. Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics , Karolinska Institutuet , Stockholm, Sweden |
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| Abstract: | The pyrimidine catabolic pathway is of crucial importance in cancer patients because it is involved in degradation of several chemotherapeutic drugs, such as 5-fluorouracil; it also is important in plants, unicellular eukaryotes, and bacteria for the degradation of pyrimidine-based biocides/antibiotics. During the last decade we have developed a yeast species, Saccharomyces kluyveri, as a model and tool to study the genes and enzymes of the pyrimidine catabolic pathway. In this report, we studied degradation of uracil and its putative degradation products in 38 yeasts and showed that this pathway was present in the ancient yeasts but was lost approximately 100 million years ago in the S. cerevisiae lineage. |
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| Keywords: | Uracil degradation Pyrimidines Yeast Evolution Cancer |
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