Abstract: | The spatially different amino acid pools (i.e. cytoplasmic, vacuolar and mitochondrial) of yeast cells are metabolically compartmentalized. The accumulation of amino acids in these pools occurs at different rates; the highest rates are observed for glutamate and alanine. The former is predominantly accumulated in the cytoplasm, the latter--in the vacuoles. The renewal rates of the amino acid pools are also different. Each of them contains at least two subpools, readily convertible and relatively stable ones. The readily convertible subpools of the cytoplasmic and mitochondrial pools predominantly contain glutamate, aspartate, valine and alanine; that of the vacuolar pool--alanine. The bulk of the readily convertible alanine subpool (67%) is localized in the vacuoles, that of glutamate and aspartate (85 and 68%, respectively)--in the cytoplasm. |