The Impacts of the Presence of Amino Alcohols on Xenobiotic Cell Signaling Pathways

Abstract

For this project, we investigated the effects of the presence of amino alcohols on the xenobiotically-catalyzed cell signaling pathways growth of Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast cells. Amino alcohols have been hypothesized to act as antitumor agents against different types of tumor cells because they could act as a ligand for the aryl hydrocarbon receptors (AhRs) responsible for regulating downstream enzymes involved in the cellular response to xenobiotic stimuli.Yeast cells, on the other hand, do not have AhR proteins within their cells, so they depend on other potentially similar mechanisms involved in responding to xenobiotic signaling pathways. I helped synthesize the amino alcohol derivative compound benzylamine using aldol-epoxide reactions, and exposed different yeast mutants to benzylamine, which will be used to help further determine the mechanisms by which the yeast cells will respond to xenobiotic stimuli.