9. Heme is Synthesized from Glycine and Succinyl-CoA. Bilirubin is the end product of heme metabolism.

10. Nitrogen assimilation proceeds in one of two ways. First, if NH4 + levels in the soil are high, plants
can use the glutamate dehydrogenase reaction to directly incorporate NH4 + into the amino acid
glutamate using α-ketoglutarate as the carbon skeleton. Animals also contain glutamate dehydrogenase,
but because of low levels of free NH4 + in cells (NH4 + is toxic), and correspondingly high levels of
glutamate, the reaction is run in the reverse direction as a way to deaminate glutamate and form
nitrogenous waste products such as urea and uric acid. A second, and more common way that plants
and bacteria incorporate NH4 + into metabolites, is through a two reaction mechanism that functions
when NH4 + concentrations are low. In this mechanism, the enzyme glutamine synthetase uses ATP in a
coupled reaction to form glutamine from glutamate using NH4 + as the source of nitrogen. Next, the
glutamine is combined with α- ketoglutarate in a reaction catalyzed by the enzyme glutamate synthase
to form two molecules of glutamate . While all organisms contain the enzyme glutamine synthetase,
only plants and animals, and some insects, have the enzyme glutamate synthase. Importantly, the newly
acquired nitrogen in glutamate and glutamine is used to synthesize a variety of other amino acids
through aminotransferase enzymes that convert glutamate and α-keto acids into α- ketoglutarate and
the corresponding α- amino acid.

11. The starting material for purine biosynthesis is α-D-ribose-5-phosphate. A coenzyme in this reaction
is the N10-formyltetrahydrofolate.

12. IMP is first converted to AMP and GMP. In the first reaction, aspartate’s amino group is linked to
IMP in a reaction powered by the hydrolysis of GTP to yield adenylosuccinate. In the second reaction,
adenylosuccinate lyase eliminates fumarate from adenylsuccinate to form AMP. GMP is also
synthesized. In the first reaction, IMP is dehydrogenated via the reduction of NAD+ to form xanthosine
monophosphate and then converted to GMP by the transfer of the glutamine amide nitrogen.
Nucleoside diphosphate are synthesized from nucleoside monophosphate by nucleoside
monophosphate kinases. Nucleoside diphosphates are converted to the corresponding triphosphates by
nucleoside diphosphate kinase. Thus yielding GTP and ATP.