morkriddare

While I'm still interested in obtaining a response to my other post (http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=46432), I would now like to ask something more specific regarding bacterial metabolism. How do bacteria go from keto acids to amino acids? Thank you! Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedMy bad! I think it's actually the other way around: amino acids are converted into keto acids. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2293160/pdf/2625-07.pdf, FIG. 1.

Hi everyone! I am a FR1 Biochemistry student in Michigan and this is my first post on this forum. I hope you guys will be able to help me figure out some metabolic pathways in E. coli. I am writing a paper on the production of long-chain alcohols by E. coli. The main reference that I'm using is a paper by Zhang, Liao and others of UCLA (http://www.pnas.org/content/105/52/20653.full.pdf+html?sid=1d98aadd-4d83-402b-aa5c-f0bf12e0ff53). These researchers have modified E. coli's lac operon and have added KIVD and ADH6 genes, as well as overexpressing genes already present in the bacterium. I know there are a lot of different pathways that interact to make the alcohols: glycolysis, pyruvate dehydrogenation, β-oxidation, formation of keto acids, etc. However, I am having a very hard time understanding how these all relate to one another. I think I understand the last steps: keto acids, the precursors of amino acids, are decarboxylated and dehydrogenated by the enzymes produced by KIVD and ADH6 to form alcohols. How do we go from glucose and pyruvate to keto acids, though? And how does this new method make longer chains of alcohol than what used to be available (5-carbon alcohol)? Any help you can give me will be greatly appreciated. Thank you!