Abstract

Pyrimidine nucleotides are not only the building blocks of DNA and RNA but also participate in multiple cellular metabolic processes, including protein, lipid and polysaccharide biosynthesis. Pyrimidine nucleotides are synthesized by two distinct pathways-the de novo and salvage pathways. Disorders in pyrimidine nucleotide metabolism cause severe neurodegenerative disorders in human. For example, deficiency in thymidylate kinase, an essential enzyme in dTTP synthesis, causes severe microcephaly in human patients. Zebrafish mutants selected by insertion mutagenesis that results in inactive enzymes in pyrimidine metabolism showed also neurological and developmental disorders. In this work I have summarized current data on neurological and developmental disorders caused by defects in enzymes in pyrimidine nucleotide metabolism in zebrafish and compared to human. All these data suggest that zebrafish is a useful animal model to study pathogenic mechanism of neurological disorders due to defect in pyrimidine nucleotide metabolism.

Keywords

Zebrafish; pyrimidine nucleotide metabolism; enzyme defect; neurological and developmental disorders; animal model

Published in

Nucleosides, Nucleotides and Nucleic Acids
2023,
Publisher: TAYLOR & FRANCIS INC

SLU Authors

• Wang, Liya

  • Department of Animal Biosciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Biochemistry and Molecular Biology


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/15257770.2023.2298742

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/127847