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Letter

Nature Chemical Biology 3, 492–497 (1 August 2007) | doi:10.1038/nchembio.2007.13

A new thiamin salvage pathway

Amy Haas Jenkins , Ghislain Schyns , S|[eacute]|bastien Potot , Guangxing Sun & Tadhg P Begley

The physiological function for thiaminase II, a thiamin-degrading enzyme, has eluded investigators for more than 50 years. Here, we demonstrate that this enzyme is involved in the regeneration of the thiamin pyrimidine rather than in thiamin degradation, and we identify a new pathway involved in the salvage of base-degraded forms of thiamin.