IMR Press / FBL / Volume 9 / Issue 2 / DOI: 10.2741/1350

Frontiers in Bioscience-Landmark (FBL) is published by IMR Press from Volume 26 Issue 5 (2021). Previous articles were published by another publisher on a subscription basis, and they are hosted by IMR Press on imrpress.com as a courtesy and upon agreement with Frontiers in Bioscience.

Article
Molecular biology of pyridine nucleotide and nicotine biosynthesis
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1 Graduate School of Biological Sciences, Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Ikoma, Nara 630-0192, Japan
Front. Biosci. (Landmark Ed) 2004, 9(2), 1577–1586; https://doi.org/10.2741/1350
Published: 1 May 2004
Abstract

Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) is a ubiquitous coenzyme in oxidation-reduction reactions. Recent animal and fungal studies show that it also plays important roles in transcriptional regulation, longevity, and age-associated diseases. NAD is synthesized de novo from aspartic acid in E. coli or from tryptophan in animals, by way of quinolinic acid. Although the number of biochemical studies on NAD is very limited, a bioinformatic search of genome databases suggests that Arabidopsis (dicots) synthesizes NAD from aspartic acid whereas rice (monocots) may utilize both aspartate and tryptophan as starting amino acids. The salvage pathway recycles the breakdown products of NAD metabolism. In tobacco, an intermediate in the de novo NAD synthetic pathway supplies the pyridine ring moiety of nicotine alkaloids. Gene expression studies in tobacco suggest that part of the NAD pathway is coordinately regulated with nicotine biosynthesis.

Keywords
Aspartate
NAD
Kynurenine
Nicotine
Nicotinic acid
Salvage pathway
Tryptophan
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