5-Aminoimidazole ribotide
5′-Phosphoribosyl-5-aminoimidazole (or aminoimidazole ribotide, AIR) is a biochemical intermediate in the formation of purine nucleotides via inosine-5-monophosphate, and hence is a building block for DNA and RNA. The vitamins thiamine and cobalamin also contain fragments derived from AIR. It is an intermediate in the adenine pathway and is synthesized from 5′-phosphoribosylformylglycinamidine by AIR synthetase. Chemistry 5-aminoimidazole derivatives were considered unstable and therefore difficult to synthesize. The first non-enzymatic synthesis of 5-aminoimidazole ribotide (AIR) was only published in 1988 and general methodology for other examples was developed in the 1990s. Biosynthesis The furanose (5-carbon) sugar in AIR comes from the pentose phosphate pathway, which converts glucose (as its 6-phosphate derivative) into ribose 5-phosphate (R5P). The subsequent reactions which attach the aminoimidazole portion of the molecule begin when R5P is activated as its pyrophosphate derivative, phosphoribosyl pyrophosphate (PRPP). This reaction is catalysed by ribose-phosphate diphosphokinase. Five biosynthetic steps complete the transformation. The first enzyme, amidophosphoribosyltransferase, attaches ammonia from glutamine to the ribotide at its anomeric carbon, forming phosphoribosylamine (PRA): + → + + PPi Next, PRA is converted to glycineamide ribonucleotide (GAR) by the action of phosphoribosylamine—glycine ligase, forming an amide bond with glycine in a process driven by ATP: + +