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. 2019 Dec 17;117(3):1395–1403. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1914380117

Fig. 1.

Fig. 1.

Central pathways for bacterial steroid catabolism. Bacteria adopt a convergent pathway (the 2,3-seco pathway) to catabolize different steroids under anaerobic conditions and adopt divergent pathways to catabolize estrogens (the 4,5-seco pathway) and other steroids (sterols and androgens; the 9,10-seco pathway) under aerobic conditions. All of the 3 steroid catabolic pathways converge at HIP. 2,3-SAOA, 17β-hydroxy-1-oxo-2,3-seco-androstan-3-oic acid (2,3-SAOA); HIP, 3aα-H-4α(3′-propanoate)-7aβ-methylhexahydro-1,5-indanedione.