Dihydropteridine Reductase

Abstract

During the past decade numerous advances have been made in understanding the structure, mechanism and clinical properties of dihydropteridine reductase. An attempt is made here to delineate the current status of this essential enzyme by describing its structural features, its kinetic mechanism, the cloning and expression of both rat and human enzyme forms, the solution of their crystal structures, their classification as members of a large family of short chain dehydrogenases, and finally a brief description is included indicating how current molecular biological applications have allowed the clinical definition of the aberrant form of phenylketonuria caused by a defective reductase.

Keywords

• dihydropteridine reductase
• quinonoid dihydrobiopterin
• crystal structure
• aberrant pku
• gene expression
• mutagenesis