🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <2b76lt$rs8@inxs.concert.net>, morgan@rock.concert.net (Morgan J Ryan -- Neil Patterson Publishers) says:
>
>        Hi. Your ingenuity please.
>        Three sequential reactions of fatty acid oxidation are chemically
>identical to three reactions of the citric acid cycle. What is the
>explanation for this textbook chestnut? Is there some chemical or
>structural biological logic?
>        The reactions are fatty acyl CoA to 3-ketoacyl CoA and succinate
>to oxaloacetate. Basically that's:
>        beta oxidation                  citric acid cyc
>R--CH2--CH2--C(O)--COA ->       COO--CH2--CH2--COO 
>R--CH==CH--C(O)--CoA ->         COO--CH==CH--COO
>R--CHOH--CH2--C(O)--CoA ->      COO--CHOH--CH2--COO
>R--C(O)--CH2--C(O)--CoA         COO--C(O)--CH2--CO
>        I've heard some pretty impressive biochemists mock each other's
>ideas about why this sequence is repeated. Is there some subterranean
>chemical logic? I don't know if there is any structural congruity among
>the enzymes of the parallel reactions.Worth a look, I suppose, if there
>isn't a more obvious explanation.
>        Ideas?
> Morgan Ryan / morgan@rock.concert.net

It is, in my view, the chemical approache nature haave chose to use
 in order to oxidise a saturated alifatic carbon atom to a carbonyl-carbon atom.
In both succinate and a fatty acid it is a methylene-carbon atom which is oxidized to
a carbonyl-carbon atom. 

To what extent there is structural similarity between the enzymes - I do not know.
The coenzymes used are the same, so the ossibility is obviously there.


                                   Harald Osmundsen