Lipids, biosynthesis

Poly(3HB) synthesis in various subcellular compartments could be used to study how plants adjust their metabolism and gene expression to accommodate the production of a new sink, and how carbon flux through one pathway can affect carbon flux through another. For example, one could study how modifying the flux of carbon to starch or lipid biosynthesis in the plastid affects the flux of carbon to acetyl-CoA and poly(3HB). Alternatively, one could study how plants adjust the activity of genes and proteins involved in isoprenoid and flavonoid biosynthesis to the creation of the poly(3HB) biosynthetic pathway in the cytoplasm, since these three pathways compete for the same building block, i. e., acetyl-CoA. 

Chikaraishi, Y., Naraoka, H. and Poulson, S. R. (2004a) Carbon and hydrogen isotopic fractionation during lipid biosynthesis in a higher plant (Cryptomeria japonica). Phytochemistry 65, 323. 

Enzymatic catalysis of reactions. Important enzymes are located in membranes at the interface between the lipid and aqueous phases. This is where reactions with apolar substrates occur. Examples include lipid biosynthesis (see p. 170) and the metabolism of apolar xenobiotics (see p. 316). The most important reactions in energy conversion—i.e., oxidative phosphorylation (see... 

Pereto, Y., Lopez-Garcia, R, and Moreira, D. (2004). Ancestral lipid biosynthesis and early membrane evolution. Trends Biochem. Sci., 29,469-77. 

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