Is there any way in which uracil biosynthesis or metabolism could help cell in degradation of toxic levels of methionine?
1 Answer
No, I don't think there are any intersections, and I can't see how uracil metabolism would have any influence upon methionine degradation.
Methionine degradation is shown in Figure 1 below. The end product is succinyl CoA which is fed into the TCA cycle. The only obvious by-product is cysteine which doesn't have any connection with uracil biosynthesis.
Uracil biosynthesis (as UMP) is shown in Figure 2: it is built from CO2 and NH3. Uracil degradation produces CO2 NH3 and aspartate.
There are certainly no shared intermediates in these pathways, and I can't come up with any convincing indirect connections either.
Figure 1. Methionine degradation
Figure 2. Uracil biosynthesis
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$\begingroup$ Theoretically, produced CO2 would buffer (minor) acidity from sulfate but that's both minor. $\endgroup$ Sep 23, 2012 at 8:23