Ionic Liquid assisted metal free decarboxylation of heteroaryl and aryl carboxylic acid derivatives under microwave irradiation

2.2 Significance of decarboxylation 2.2.1 Role in biosynthetic pathways In the biochemical milieu, decarboxylation is a ubiquitous step for transformation of amino acids into various other secondary metabolites using specific enzymes termed decarboxylases [Liu and Zhang (2006)]. More importantly, nature has also employed decarboxylation as a central tool for linking metabolic pathways like glycolysis and citric acid cycle, whereby, pyruvate is decarboxylated into acetyl CoA which subsequently enters the citric acid cycle (Figure 1) [Nelson and Cox (2009)]. In this way, it commits pyruvate to enter the citric acid cycle, where it is either used as a substrate for oxidative phosphorylation, or is converted to citrate for export to the cytosol.