Abstract. Using histochemical detection, we have visualized in situ the complete metabolic pathway for the degradation of purine nucleotides. From the tongue to the ileum, diverse epithelial cell types lining the lumen of the mouse gastrointestinal (GI) tract strongly coexpress each of the five key purine catabolic enzymes. Dramatic increases in the expression of each enzyme occurred during postnatal maturation of the GI tract. Using in situ hybridization, an intense accumulation of adenosine deaminase (ADA) mRNA was detected only within GI epithelial cells undergoing postmitotic differentiation . In a similar manner, at the developing maternal-fetal interface, high level expression of the purine catabolic pathway also occurred in a unique subset of maternal decidual cells previously known to express high levels of alkaline phosphatase P URINE nucleotide synthesis and degradation are essential for life. Genetic defects in the purine metabolic pathway can cause devastating human disease, such as Lesch-Nyhan syndrome or severe immunodeficiency (Giblett, 1972; Camera and Carson, 1987 ;Kredich and Hershfield, 1989) . The importance of the purine pathway is also illustrated by the wide variety of potent and clinically beneficial drugs such as allopurinol, 6-mercaptopurine, methotrexate, and trimethoprim that have resulted from pharmacological targeting of purine pathway enzymes (for review, see Elion, 1989). The purine ring, large quantities of which are required for cell growth and proliferation, requires for its synthesis more than a dozen enzyme activities, a spectrum of metabolic substrates, and a substantial amount of chemical energy.Given the metabolic expense of purine biosynthesis, it might be considered surprising that mice and other mammals do not reuse dietary purine nucleotides for DNA and RNA synthesis (Sonoda and Tatibana, 1978 ;Ho et al., 1979;Savaiano et al., 1980 ;Uauy, 1989). Consistent with this, rat duodenal mucosa has long been shown to produce the nonreusable purines, uric acid and allantoin, from AMP (Getler