Catabolism of pyrimidines in yeast: A tool to understand degradation of anticancer drugs
Author
Summary, in English
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.
Department/s
Publishing year
2006
Language
English
Pages
991-996
Publication/Series
Nucleosides, Nucleotides & Nucleic Acids
Volume
25
Issue
9-11
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Topic
- Biological Sciences
Keywords
- yeast
- uracil degradation
- pyrimidines
- evolution
- cancer
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 1525-7770