Dictyostelium discoideum salvages purine deoxyribonucleosides by highly specific bacterial-like deoxyribonucleoside kinases
The salvage of deoxyribonucleosides in the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum, which has an extremely A + T-rich genome, was investigated. All native deoxyribonucleosides were phosphorylated by D. discoideum cell extracts and we subcloned three deoxyribonucleoside kinase (dNK) encoding genes. D. discoideum thymidine kinase was similar to the human thymidine kinase 1 and was specific for thymid