Description
The irreversible decarboxylation step, which commits 2-oxo acids to the Ehrlich pathway, was initially attributed to pyruvate decarboxylase. However, the yeast genome was shown to harbour no fewer than 5 genes that show sequence similarity with thiamine-diphosphate dependent decarboxylase genes. Three of these (PDC1, PDC5 and PDC6) encode pyruvate decarboxylases { while ARO10 and THI3 represent alternative candidates for Ehrlich-pathway decarboxylases.