Compartmentation of Intracellular Nucleotides In Mammalian Cell
Abstract
Volume 19, Issue 1 45 COMPARTMENTATION OF INTRACELLULAR NUCLEOTIDES IN MAMMALIAN CELLS Authors: James D. Moyer Laboratory of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacology National Cancer Institute Bethesda, Maryland J. Frank Henderson Cancer Research Group and Department of Biochemistry University of Alberta Edmonton, Alberta, Canada Referee: Mary Ellen Jones Department of Biochemistry and Nutrition University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, North Carolina I. INTRODUCTION Purine and pyrimidine nucleotides are involved in almost every area of cellular metabolism, and alterations in nucleotide concentrations have been related to numerous pathological conditions; in addition, many drugs have been developed to affect one or another aspect of nucleotide metabolism. As a consequence of the important role of nucleotides in biochemistry, pathology, and pharmacology, the measurement of nucleotide concentrations (or nucleotide âpoolsâ) has assumed considerable importance in many areas of biomedical research. Such measurements most often are made (1) to establish the specific activity of a precursor nucleotide pool in order to calculate the rate of synthesis of a product; or (2) to attempt to relate the intracellular concentration of a nucleotide with the rate of some process that requires this nucleotide. Both historically and at the practical level of laboratory investigation, it tends to