| Literature DB >> 21930129 |
Abstract
Glycogen, a branched polymer of glucose, is well known as a cellular reserve of metabolic energy and/or biosynthetic precursors. Besides glucose, however, glycogen contains small amounts of covalent phosphate, present as C2 and C3 phosphomonoesters. Current evidence suggests that the phosphate is introduced by the biosynthetic enzyme glycogen synthase as a rare alternative to its normal catalytic addition of glucose units. The phosphate can be removed by the laforin phosphatase, whose mutation causes a fatal myoclonus epilepsy called Lafora disease. The hypothesis is that glycogen phosphorylation can be considered a catalytic error and laforin a repair enzyme.Entities:
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Year: 2011 PMID: 21930129 PMCID: PMC4939770 DOI: 10.1016/j.febslet.2011.09.009
Source DB: PubMed Journal: FEBS Lett ISSN: 0014-5793 Impact factor: 4.124