Exploring the Mutated Kinases for Chemoenzymatic Synthesis of -Modified Cytidine Monophosphates.

Nucleosides, nucleotides, and their analogues are an important class of molecules that are used as substrates in research of enzymes and nucleic acid, or as antiviral and antineoplastic agents. Nucleoside phosphorylation is usually achieved with chemical methods; however, enzymatic phosphorylation is a viable alternative. Here, we present a chemoenzymatic synthesis of modified cytidine monophosphates, where a chemical synthesis of novel -modified cytidines is followed by an enzymatic phosphorylation of the nucleosides by nucleoside kinases.

Bacterial amidohydrolases and modified 5-fluorocytidine compounds: Novel enzyme-prodrug pairs.

Gene-directed enzyme prodrug therapy is an emerging strategy for cancer treatment based on the delivery of a gene that encodes an enzyme that is able to convert a prodrug into a potent cytotoxin exclusively in target cancer cells. However, it is limited by the lack of suitable enzyme variants and a scarce choice of chemical bonds that could be activated. Therefore, this study is aimed to determine the capability of bacterial amidohydrolases YqfB and D8_RL to activate novel prodrugs and the effect such system has on the viability of eukaryotic cancer cells.

Application of the uridine auxotrophic host and synthetic nucleosides for a rapid selection of hydrolases from metagenomic libraries.

A high-throughput method (≥ 10 of clones can be analysed on a single agar plate) for the selection of ester-hydrolysing enzymes was developed based on the uridine auxotrophy of Escherichia coli strain DH10B ΔpyrFEC and the acylated derivatives 2',3',5'-O-tri-acetyluridine and 2',3',5'-O-tri-hexanoyluridine as the sole source of uridine. The proposed approach permits the selection of hydrolases belonging to different families and active towards different substrates. Moreover, the ester group of the substrate used for the selection, at least partly, determined the specificity of the selected enzymes.