INTRODUCTION Cyclopropane-containing natural products are very unique owing to their unusual bonding and inherent ring strain (27.5 kcal/mol). 1 This strained ring has been found in naturally occurring terpenes, steroids, amino acids, fatty acids, alkaloids, and nucleic acids. For example, chrysanthemic acid derivatives, produced in plants via isoprenoid pathway are precursors to potent insecti...

Medium-chain-length polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) are polyesters having properties of biodegradable thermoplastics and elastomers that are naturally produced by a variety of pseudomonads. Saccharomyces cerevisiae was transformed with the Pseudomonas aeruginosa PHAC1 synthase modified for peroxisome targeting by the addition of the carboxyl 34 amino acids from the Brassica napus isocitrate lyase....

The branched chain amino acids (BCAA) valine, leucine and isoleucine have been implicated in a number of diseases including obesity, insulin resistance, and type 2 diabetes mellitus, although the mechanisms are still poorly understood. Adipose tissue plays an important role in BCAA homeostasis by actively metabolizing circulating BCAA. In this work, we have investigated the link between BCAA ca...

Compared to normal human tissues, many common human cancers, including carcinoma of the colon, prostate, ovary, breast, and endometrium, express high levels of fatty acid synthase (FAS, EC ), the primary enzyme responsible for the synthesis of fatty acids. This differential expression of FAS between normal tissues and cancer has led to the notion that FAS is a target for anticancer drug develop...

4. Biochemistry of palm oil ..................................................................................................................................... 510 4.1. Fruit development and oil deposition ...................................................................................................... 510 4.2. Changes in lipid class and fatty acid composition during development of the o...

Developing Brassica napus embryos are primarily concerned with the accumulation of storage products, namely oil, starch and protein. The presence of fatty acid catabolic pathways in the background of this biosynthetic activity was investigated. Enzymes involved in the process of lipid mobilization, such as malate synthase and isocitrate lyase, are detectable towards the late stages of embryo de...

We describe the physiological function of heterologously expressed Mycobacterium tuberculosis InhA during de novo lipoic acid synthesis in yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) mitochondria. InhA, representing 2-trans-enoyl-acyl carrier protein reductase and the target for the front-line antituberculous drug isoniazid, is involved in the activity of dissociative type 2 fatty acid synthase (FASII) th...

Although tamoxifen can trigger steatohepatitis, the mechanism of steatosis is unclear. We hypothesized that this DNA-intercalating, cationic amphiphilic drug could accumulate within mitochondria to impair fatty acid oxidation, respiration, and mitochondrial DNA relaxation and synthesis. We studied the in vitro effects of tamoxifen on topoisomerases and mouse liver mitochondria and its in vivo h...

Carbohydrate feeding of animals results in striking increases in hepatic fatty acid synthesis but much of this induction is presumed to be hormone mediated. To clarify the mechanisms responsible for the specific effect of carbohydrate on fatty acid synthesis, the effects of D-glucose on the expression of human fatty acid synthase (FAS) in HepG2 cells cultured in serum-free medium were studied. ...

The acetoacetyl-CoA reductase and the polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) synthase from Ralstonia eutropha (formerly Alcaligenes eutrophus) were expressed in Escherichia coli, Klebsiella aerogenes, and PHA-negative mutants of R. eutropha and Pseudomonas putida. While expression in E. coli strains resulted in the accumulation of poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) [PHB], strains of R. eutropha, P. putida and K. aero...