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Purines, namely adenine and guanine, are one of two chemical compounds that cells use to make the building blocks of DNA and RNA. (The other are pyrimidines, cytosine and thymine.) Cells can make purines in two ways: by building them from scratch, known as “de novo purine biosynthesis,” or by recycling them from existing molecules, known as “purine salvage.” When the salvage pathway is active, it signals to the cell to slow down the biosynthesis pathway so that the cell does not make too many purines. Until recently, scientists did not fully understand how this slowdown happens.
