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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2013 Feb 1.
Published in final edited form as: Am J Kidney Dis. 2011 Oct 5;59(2):284–292. doi: 10.1053/j.ajkd.2011.07.024

Figure 5.

Figure 5

Brief schematic representation of the sialic acid biosynthesis pathway. Glucose is converted into uridine diphosphate–N-acetylglucosamine (UDP-GlcNAc) through a number of enzymatic steps (not shown), which is converted to N-acetyl-D-mannosamine (ManNAc) via a rate-limiting reaction calalyzed by GNE. ManNAc undergoes conversion to cytidine monophosphate–sialic acid (CMP-sialic acid), which provides feedback inhibition to the rate-limiting GNE-calalyzed reaction. Exogenous ManNAc supplements enters the pathway after this rate limiting step. A substantial part of the sialic acid is incorporated into N- and O-linked glycan residues in structural and secreted glycoproteins. Modified from Luchansky et al19 with permission of The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.