C14 labelled galactose - which carbon to label? (Oct/23/2007 )

Hi,
I am planning an experiment where I will take radiolabelled galactose (C-14 labelled) and feed to yeast. Then I will look at the end products of the metabolism to see if my metabolite of interest has been formed, and if yes, how much. My metabolite of interest is a compound called artemisinic acid. The galactose would have to go through glycolysis and then through the mevalonate pathway for artemisinic acid to be formed.

The problem is, I have found out that the commercially available C14-Gal is labelled at carbon-1. My question is, how to find out if the carbon-1 will be transferred through the metabolic pathway to artemisinic acid. What is the carbon-1 forms some other metabolite in the course of the pathway? How to find this out?

Thanks for any help.

As I already said in "Model organisms":

I would have a look on the pathways to find out how Gal is metabolized. I found several websites that will lead you to your product step by step. You just need to follow C1. Good luck, it`s quite confusing. In my opinion it reaches the artemisinic acid. I know it makes it all the way down to pyruvate. From there on I got lost several times. But have a look youself.

http://www.biochem.arizona.edu/classes/bio...se4fig14-11.jpg
http://fig.cox.miami.edu/~cmallery/255/255...sis_pathway.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMG-CoA_reductase_pathway
http://www.nsf.gov/eng/cbet/nuggets/1491/i...91_keasling.jpg
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7183089-0-large.jpg