Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: EC:6.3.4.6 (urease)
 7,490 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Uninduced cultures of Saccharomyces cerevisiae exhibit high basal levels of allantoinase, allantoicase, and ureidoglycolate hydrolase, the enzymes responsible for degrading allantoin to urea. As a result, these activities increase only 4- to 8-fold upon induction, whereas the urea-degrading enzymes, urea carboxylase and allophanate hydrolase, have very low basal levels and routinely increase 30-fold on induction. Differences in the inducibility of these five enzymes were somewhat surprising because they are all part of the same pathway and have the same inducer, allophanate. Our current studies reconcile these observations. S. cerevisiae normally contained up to 1 mM allantoin sequestered in a cellular organelle, most likely the vacuole. Separation of the large amounts of allantoin and the enzymes that degrade it provide the cell with an efficient nitrogen reserve. On starvation, sequestered allantoin likely becomes accessible to these degradative enzymes. Because they are already present at high levels, the fact that their inducer is considerably removed from the input allantoin is of little consequence. This suggests that at times metabolite compartmentation may play an equal role with enzyme induction in the regulation of allantoin metabolism. Metabolism of arginine, another sequestered metabolite, must be controlled both by induction of arginase and compartmentation because arginine serves both as a reserve nitrogen source and a precursor of protein synthesis. The latter function precludes the existence of high basal levels of arginase.
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PMID:Metabolite compartmentation in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. 35 30

Seven Bacillus strains including one of the original Bacillus fastidiosus strains of Den Dooren de Jong could grow on urate, allantoin, and, except one, on allantoate. No growth could be detected on adenine, guanine, hypoxanthine, xanthine, and on degradation products of allantoate. Some strains grew very slowly in complex media. The metabolic pathway from urate to glyoxylate involved uricase, S(+)-allantoinase, allantoate amidohydrolase, S(-)-ureidoglycolase, and, in some strains, urease.
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PMID:Uric acid degradation by Bacillus fastidiosus strains. 124 68

Hyphomicrobium species are able to use allantoin as a nitrogen source for growth. Allantoin is broken down to glyoxylate and ammonia by the consecutive action of allantoinase, allantoicase, ureidoglycolase and urease.
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PMID:Metabolism of allantoin in Hyphomicrobium species. 733 36

Uric-acid-degrading enzymes (uricase, allantoinase, allantoicase, ureidoglycolate lyase and urease) were lost during vertebrate evolution and the causes for this loss are still unclear. We have recently cloned the first vertebrate allantoicase cDNA from the amphibian Xenopus laevis. Surprisingly, we have found some mammalian expressed sequence tags (ESTs) that show high similarity with Xenopus allantoicase cDNA. From a human fetal spleen cDNA library and adult kidney EST clone, we have obtained a 1790 nucleotide long cDNA. The 3' end of this sequence reveals a substantial high identity with the corresponding portion of Xenopus allantoicase cDNA. In contrast, at the 5' end the human sequence diverges from that of Xenopus; since no continuous open reading frame can be found in this region, the hypothetical human protein appears truncated at its N-terminus. We proposed that such a transcript could be due to an incorrect splicing mechanism that introduces an intron portion at the 5' end of human cDNA. Allantoicase cDNA is expressed in adult testis, prostate, kidney and fetal spleen. By comparison with available genomic sequences deposited in database, we have determined that the human allantoicase gene consists of five exons and spans 8kb. We have also mapped the gene in chromosome 2.
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PMID:Human allantoicase gene: cDNA cloning, genomic organization and chromosome localization. 1105 55

Allantoicase is one of the enzymes involved in uricolysis. The enzymes of this catabolic pathway (i.e. allantoinase, allantoicase, ureidoglycolate lyase and urease) were lost during vertebrate evolution and the causes for this loss are still unclear. In mammals, as well as in birds and reptiles, the activity of allantoicase is absent; notwithstanding, we recently cloned human and mouse cDNA sequences with high similarity with previously characterized allantoicases. In the present paper, we report the genomic organization of the allantoicase gene in mouse and in man. Both genes are constituted by 11 exons that appear to be very conserved; introns are more variable in length while maintain the same phase but for intron 4. We have also detected a second transcript of the human allantoicase gene in which exon 1 is absent. Moreover, the mouse gene maps in chromosome 12 at 13.0 cM from the centromere.
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PMID:Genomic organization and chromosome localization of the murine and human allantoicase gene. 1203 79

Agaricus bisporus is able to use urate, allantoin, allantoate, urea and alloxanate as nitrogen sources for growth. The presence of urate oxidase, allantoinase, ureidoglycolase and urease activities, both in fruit bodies and mycelia, points to a degradative pathway for urate similar to that found in various microorganisms. So far all efforts to demonstrate the enzyme responsible for allantoate degradation failed. A urease inhibitor appeared to be present in cell-free extracts from fruit bodies.
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PMID:Purine degradation in the edible mushroom Agaricus bisporus. 1263 Mar 18

Degradation of purines to uric acid is generally conserved among organisms, however, the end product of uric acid degradation varies from species to species depending on the presence of active catabolic enzymes. In humans, most higher primates and birds, the urate oxidase gene is non-functional and hence uric acid is not further broken down. Uric acid in human blood plasma serves as an antioxidant and an immune enhancer; conversely, excessive amounts cause the common affliction gout. In contrast, uric acid is completely degraded to ammonia in most fungi. Currently, relatively little is known about uric acid catabolism in the fungal pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans even though this yeast is commonly isolated from uric acid-rich pigeon guano. In addition, uric acid utilization enhances the production of the cryptococcal virulence factors capsule and urease, and may potentially modulate the host immune response during infection. Based on these important observations, we employed both Agrobacterium-mediated insertional mutagenesis and bioinformatics to predict all the uric acid catabolic enzyme-encoding genes in the H99 genome. The candidate C. neoformans uric acid catabolic genes identified were named: URO1 (urate oxidase), URO2 (HIU hydrolase), URO3 (OHCU decarboxylase), DAL1 (allantoinase), DAL2,3,3 (allantoicase-ureidoglycolate hydrolase fusion protein), and URE1 (urease). All six ORFs were then deleted via homologous recombination; assaying of the deletion mutants' ability to assimilate uric acid and its pathway intermediates as the sole nitrogen source validated their enzymatic functions. While Uro1, Uro2, Uro3, Dal1 and Dal2,3,3 were demonstrated to be dispensable for virulence, the significance of using a modified animal model system of cryptococcosis for improved mimicking of human pathogenicity is discussed.
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PMID:Characterization of the complete uric acid degradation pathway in the fungal pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans. 2366 4