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. 2018 May 15;9(3):e00642-18. doi: 10.1128/mBio.00642-18

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Copyright © 2018 Fernandes et al.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

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FIG 1 — Glycosphingolipid structure and biosynthesis. (A) Basic structure of a neutral glycosphingolipid, made up of a sphingoid base (highlighted in blue) and a fatty acid chain (highlighted in black) to form ceramide, which is linked to a sugar residue (highlighted in red). (B) The structure of IPC, a simple acidic glycosphingolipid, is shown. Acidic glycosphingolipids differ from neutral glycosphingolipids in that they contain an additional -OH group at C₄ of the sphingoid base and lack C₉-methylation and Δ4- and Δ8-unsaturations (highlighted in orange). Another difference is that acidic glycosphingolipids are made up of a very long fatty acid (C_18–26, highlighted in purple) instead of the C_16–18 chain found in neutral glycosphingolipids. (C) Proposed biosynthetic pathway of glycosphingolipids. The reactions indicated by the number 3 are common to acidic and neutral GSL synthesis, while those indicated by the numbers 4 and 5 are exclusive of neutral (see Neutral GSL Synthesis in the text) and acidic (see Acidic GSL Synthesis in the text) GSLs, respectively.