The importance of glyoxylate in amino acid biosynthesis in plants

1. [¹⁴C₂]Glyoxylate was rapidly metabolized by carrot storage tissues, pea leaves, pea cotyledons, sunflower cotyledons, corn coleoptiles, corn roots and pea roots. In many tissues over 70% of the supplied [¹⁴C₂]glyoxylate was utilized during the 6hr. experimental periods. 2. In all tissues, the chief products of [¹⁴C₂]-glyoxylate metabolism were carbon dioxide, glycine and serine. In several of the tissues, there was also a considerable incorporation of the label into the organic acids, particularly into glycollate. 3. Degradations of the labelled serine produced during [¹⁴C₂]glyoxylate metabolism showed that glyoxylate carbon was incorporated into all three positions of the serine molecule. 4. The results are interpreted as indicating that glyoxylate is utilized by the tissues by pathways involving transamination, transmethylation, reduction and oxidative decarboxylation of the supplied glyoxylate.