Biological Function
Phenylalanine ammonia lyase can perform different functions in different species. It is found mainly in some plants, fungi, and yeast. In fungal and yeast cells, PAL plays an important catabolic role, generating carbon and nitrogen. In plants it is a key biosynthetic enzyme that catalyzes the first step in the synthesis of a variety of polyphenyl compounds and is mainly involved in defense mechanisms. PAL is involved in 5 metabolic pathways: tyrosine metabolism, phenylalanine metabolism, nitrogen metabolism, phenylpropanoid biosynthesis, and alkaloid biosynthesis ii.
Read more about this topic: Phenylalanine Ammonia-lyase
Famous quotes containing the words biological and/or function:
“I am fifty-two years of age. I am a bishop in the Anglican Church, and a few people might be constrained to say that I was reasonably responsible. In the land of my birth I cannot vote, whereas a young person of eighteen can vote. And why? Because he or she possesses that wonderful biological attribute—a white skin.”
—Desmond Tutu (b. 1931)
“Philosophical questions are not by their nature insoluble. They are, indeed, radically different from scientific questions, because they concern the implications and other interrelations of ideas, not the order of physical events; their answers are interpretations instead of factual reports, and their function is to increase not our knowledge of nature, but our understanding of what we know.”
—Susanne K. Langer (1895–1985)