BIO 361 Lecture 27: LECTURE 27A BIOCHEM
10 Jul 2016
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Document Summary
Cancer cells don"t view the krebs cycle unidirectionally. Therefore, the krebs cycle can be both a biosynthetic and catabolic pathway. Interestingly, at the point that people were able to perceive krebs cycles can function in such a way in tumor cells, they also found it to act similarly in the plasmodium falciparum parasite, a malarial parasite. This parasite lives inside rbcs that supply it with an abundant supply of food, but the parasite needs to catabolize food to replicate at the expense of its host. In order to do that, it takes up metabolites from the rbcs (glutamine is a good substrate for this parasite). What the parasite does is to acquire alpha-keto glutarate from the externally-derived glutamine. Parasites living inside rbcs have many amino acids at its disposal. The hemoglobin of the rbc becomes the source of the glutamine that enters the parasite.
