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A pentose bisphosphate pathway for nucleoside degradation in Archaea

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Abstract

Owing to the absence of the pentose phosphate pathway, the degradation pathway for the ribose moieties of nucleosides is unknown in Archaea. Here, in the archaeon Thermococcus kodakarensis, we identified a metabolic network that links the pentose moieties of nucleosides or nucleotides to central carbon metabolism. The network consists of three nucleoside phosphorylases, an ADP-dependent ribose-1-phosphate kinase and two enzymes of a previously identified NMP degradation pathway, ribose-1,5-bisphosphate isomerase and type III ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase. Ribose 1,5-bisphosphate and ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate are intermediates of this pathway, which is thus designated the pentose bisphosphate pathway.

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Figure 1: Nucleoside metabolism in Archaea, Bacteria and Eukarya.

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Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology program of the Japan Science and Technology Agency to H.A. within the research area 'Creation of Basic Technology for Improved Bioenergy Production through Functional Analysis and Regulation of Algae and Other Aquatic Microorganisms'. R.A. is a Research Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Synthetic Chemistry and Biological Chemistry, Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    Riku Aono, Takaaki Sato & Haruyuki Atomi

  2. Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Tokyo, Japan

    Riku Aono

  3. Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology, Tokyo, Japan

    Takaaki Sato, Tadayuki Imanaka & Haruyuki Atomi

  4. Department of Biotechnology, College of Life Sciences, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan

    Tadayuki Imanaka

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  1. Riku Aono
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  2. Takaaki Sato
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H.A., T.I., T.S. and R.A. designed the work; R.A. carried out the experiments; R.A., T.S. and H.A. wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Haruyuki Atomi.

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Supplementary Results, Supplementary Tables 1–7 and Supplementary Figures 1–16. (PDF 7128 kb)

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Aono, R., Sato, T., Imanaka, T. et al. A pentose bisphosphate pathway for nucleoside degradation in Archaea. Nat Chem Biol 11, 355–360 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchembio.1786

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