English: The s-triazine herbicide atrazine is a widely used that is persistant in the soil. It is prone to ground and surface water contamination. A range of soil bacteria, including both Gram-negative and Gram-positive strains can degrade atrazine, utilizing it as a nitrogen and carbon source. In this aerobic pathway, which has been studied in most detail in the bacterium Pseudomonas sp. ADP, atrazine is catabolized in three enzymatic steps to cyanurate, which can be further metabolized by ring cleavage to carbon dioxide and ammonia. The first enzyme, encoded by either atzA or trzN (EC 3.8.1.8), converts atrazine to hydroxyatrazine. Two additional hydrolases, encoded by the atzB (EC 3.5.99.3) and atzC (EC 3.5.99.4) genes, continue the process by removing the ethylamine and isopropylamine groups. While some organisms possess all of the required enzymes, other communities degrade atrazine by a community-approach, where different organisms have some of the enzymes, and the intermediates in the pathway are passed between the organisms.

الشيفرة المصدرية لهذا الرسم المتجه صالحة.   هذا الرسم المتجهي أُنشئ بواسطة ChemSketch    This structural formula uses embedded text for its chemistry symbols. This graphic of a chemical compound or chemical reaction was sketched in a freeware version of ChemSketch , with the Carbohydr. Res. (2003) structure drawing style. Then it was copied and pasted into Inkscape, and saved as .svg.

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