The Role of the Glyoxylate Cycle

The glyoxylate cycle, a variation of the tricarboxylic acid cycle, is an anabolic pathway occurring in plants, bacteria, protists, and fungi. The glyoxylate cycle centers on the conversion of acetyl-CoA to succinate for the synthesis of carbohydrates. In microorganisms, the glyoxylate cycle allows cells to utilize simple carbon compounds as a carbon source when complex sources such as glucose are not available. The cycle is generally assumed to be absent in animals. In recent years, however, the detection of malate synthase (MS) and isocitrate lyase (ICL), key enzymes involved in the glyoxylate cycle, in some animal tissue has raised questions regarding the evolutionary relationship of enzymes in bacteria and animals and suggests that animals encode alternative enzymes of the cycle that differ in function from known MS and ICL in nonmetazoan species. The glyoxylate cycle utilizes three of the five enzymes associated with the tricarboxylic acid cycle and shares many of its intermediate steps.