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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2010 Sep 1.
Published in final edited form as: Biochim Biophys Acta. 2009 Jul 24;1792(9):881–887. doi: 10.1016/j.bbadis.2009.07.001

Fig. 2.

Fig. 2

Sialic acid synthesis pathway. The biosynthesis of sialic acid (Neu5Ac) occurs in the cytosol, where glucose undergoes several modifications to become UDP-GlcNAc. The UDP-GlcNAC 2-epimerase activity of GNE/MNK then epimerises UDP-GlcNAc into ManNAc, after which its ManNAc kinase activity further converts this to ManNAc-6-P, which is then converted in several steps to the downstream product CMP-sialic acid. CMP-sialic acid is utilized by the Golgi complex to sialylate glycoconjugates. CMP-sialic acid can feedback-inhibit the UDP-GlcNAc 2-epimerase enzymatic activity in its allosteric site. For more details, see text.