Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0017536 (giardiasis)
 1,714 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Purine metabolism in Giardia lamblia was investigated by monitoring incorporation of radiolabeled precursors into purine nucleotides in the log-phase trophozoites cultivated in vitro in axenic media and incubated in buffered saline glucose. The lack of incorporation of formate, glycine, hypoxanthine, inosine, and xanthine into the nucleotide pool suggests the absence of de novo purine nucleotide synthesis and the inability to form IMP as the precursor of AMP and GMP in G. lamblia. Only adenine, adenosine, guanine, and guanosine were incorporated. Further analysis of the labeled nucleotides by HPLC indicated that adenine and adenosine are converted only to adenine nucleotides whereas guanine and guanosine are only incorporated into guanine nucleotides. There is no competition of incorporation between adenine/adenosine and guanine/guanosine, and there is no interconversion between adenine and guanine nucleotides. Results from analyzing [5'-3H]guanosine incorporation indicate that the ribose moiety is not incorporated with the guanine base. Assays of purine salvage enzymic activities in the crude extracts of G. lamblia revealed the presence of only four major enzymes; adenosine and guanosine hydrolases and adenine and guanine phosphoribosyl transferases. Apparently, G. lamblia has an exceedingly simple purine salvage system; it converts adenosine and guanosine to corresponding purine bases and then forms AMP and GMP by the actions of corresponding purine phosphoribosyl transferases. The guanine phosphoribosyl transferase in G. lamblia is interesting because it does not recognize either hypoxanthine or xanthine as substrate. It thus must have a unique substrate specificity and may be regarded as a potential target to attack as a rational approach to chemotherapeutic control of giardiasis.
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PMID:Purine salvage networks in Giardia lamblia. 660 8

Purine phosphoribosyltransferases catalyze the Mg2+ -dependent reaction that transforms a purine base into its corresponding nucleotide. They are present in a wide variety of organisms including plants, mammals, and parasitic protozoa. Giardia lamblia, the causative agent of giardiasis, lacks de novo purine biosynthesis and relies primarily on adenine and guanine phosphoribosyltransferases (APRTase and GPRTase) constituting two independent and essential purine salvage pathways. The APRTase from G. lamblia was cloned and expressed with a 6-His tag at its C terminus and purified to apparent homogeneity. Adenine and alpha-d-5-phosphoribosyl-1-pyrophosphate (PRPP) have K(m) values of 4.2 and 143 microm with a k(cat) of 2.8 s(-1) in the forward reaction, whereas AMP and PP(i) have K(m) values of 87 and 450 microm with a k(cat) of 9.5 x 10(-3) s(-1) in the reverse reaction. Product inhibition studies indicated that the forward reaction follows a random Bi Bi mechanism. Results from the kinetics of equilibrium isotope exchange further verified a random Bi Bi mechanism in the forward reaction. In a mutant enzyme, F25W, with kinetic constants similar to those of the wild type and a tryptophan residue at the adenine binding site, the addition of adenine or AMP to the free mutant enzyme resulted in fluorescence quenching, whereas PRPP caused fluorescence enhancement. The dissociation constants thus estimated are 16.5 microm for adenine, 14.3 microm for AMP, and 83.0 microm for PRPP. PP(i) exerted no detectable effect on the tryptophan fluorescence at all, suggesting a lack of PP(i) binding to the free enzyme. An ordered substrate binding in the reverse reaction with AMP bound first followed by PP(i) is thus postulated.
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PMID:The adenine phosphoribosyltransferase from Giardia lamblia has a unique reaction mechanism and unusual substrate binding properties. 1217 24