Sialic Acid
Sialic acids are a class of alpha-keto acid sugars with a nine-carbon backbone. The term "sialic acid" () was first introduced by Swedish biochemist Gunnar Blix in 1952. The most common member of this group is ''N''-acetylneuraminic acid (Neu5Ac or NANA) found in animals and some prokaryotes. Sialic acids are found widely distributed in animal tissues and related forms are found to a lesser extent in other organisms like in some micro-algae, bacteria and archaea. Sialic acids are commonly part of glycoproteins, glycolipids or gangliosides, where they decorate the end of sugar chains at the surface of cells or soluble proteins. However, sialic acids have been also observed in ''Drosophila'' embryos and other insects. Generally, plants seem not to contain or display sialic acids. In humans, the brain has the highest sialic acid content, where these acids play an important role in neural transmission and ganglioside structure in synaptogenesis. More than 50 kinds of sial ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Neu5Ac
''N''-Acetylneuraminic acid (Neu5Ac or NANA) is the predominant sialic acid found in human cells, and many mammalian cells. Other forms, such as N-Glycolylneuraminic acid, may also occur in cells. This residue is negatively charged at physiological pH and is found in complex glycans on mucins and glycoproteins found at the cell membrane. Neu5Ac residues are also found in glycolipids, known as gangliosides, a crucial component of neuronal membranes found in the brain. Along with involvement in preventing infections (mucus associated with mucous membranes—mouth, nose, GI, respiratory tract), Neu5Ac acts as a receptor for influenza viruses, allowing attachment to mucous cells via hemagglutinin (an early step in acquiring influenzavirus infection). In the biology of bacterial pathogens Neu5Ac is also important in the biology of a number of pathogenic and symbiotic bacteria as it can be used either as a nutrient, providing both carbon and nitrogen to the bacteria, or in some pathog ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Glycoconjugates
In molecular biology and biochemistry, glycoconjugates are the classification family for carbohydrates – referred to as glycans – which are covalently linked with chemical species such as proteins, peptides, lipids, and other compounds. Glycoconjugates are formed in processes termed glycosylation. Glycoconjugates are very important compounds in biology and consist of many different categories such as glycoproteins, glycopeptides, peptidoglycans, glycolipids, glycosides, and lipopolysaccharides. They are involved in cell–cell interactions, including cell–cell recognition; in cell–matrix interactions; and in detoxification processes. Generally, the carbohydrate part(s) play an integral role in the function of a glycoconjugate; prominent examples of this are neural cell adhesion molecule (NCAM) and blood proteins where fine details in the carbohydrate structure determine cell binding (or not) or lifetime in circulation. Although the important molecular species D ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sialic Acid Mutarotase
N-acetylneuraminate epimerase (, ''sialic acid epimerase'', ''N-acetylneuraminate mutarotase'', sialic acid mutarotase, ''YjhT'', NanM) is an enzyme with systematic name ''N-acetyl-alpha-neuraminate 2-epimerase''. This enzyme catalyses the following chemical reaction : ''N''-acetyl-alpha-neuraminate \rightleftharpoons ''N''-acetyl-beta-neuraminate Sialoglycoconjugates present in vertebrates are linked exclusively by alpha-linkages. See also * sialic acid ** ''N''-acetylneuraminate * Mutarotation In stereochemistry, mutarotation is the change in optical rotation of a chiral material in a solution due to a change in proportion of the two constituent anomers (i.e. the interconversion of their respective stereocenters) until equilibrium is re ... References External links * {{Portal bar, Biology, border=no EC 5.1.3 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sialic Acids 2
In geology, sial is an antiquated blended term for the composition of the upper layer of Earth's crust, namely rocks rich in aluminium silicate minerals. It is sometimes equated with the continental crust because it is absent in the wide oceanic basins, but 'sial' is a geochemical term rather than a plate tectonic term. As these elements are less dense than the majority of Earth's elements, they tend to be concentrated in the upper layer of the crust. The uppermost layer of the crust is called the sial, consisting of silicate and aluminium (Si = silicate, Al = aluminium). On average, the thickness of the sial is till 25 km from the surface. The continents are composed mainly of lighter rock material formed from silicon and aluminium, so the sial is thick over the continents and very thin or absent on the ocean floor, especially the Pacific Ocean. Average density of the sial is 2.7 g/cm3. Geologists often refer to the rocks in this layer as felsic, because they contain high le ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sialic Acids
Sialic acids are a class of alpha-keto acid sugars with a nine-carbon backbone. The term "sialic acid" () was first introduced by Swedish biochemist Gunnar Blix in 1952. The most common member of this group is ''N''-acetylneuraminic acid (Neu5Ac or NANA) found in animals and some prokaryotes. Sialic acids are found widely distributed in animal tissues and related forms are found to a lesser extent in other organisms like in some micro-algae, bacteria and archaea. Sialic acids are commonly part of glycoproteins, glycolipids or gangliosides, where they decorate the end of sugar chains at the surface of cells or soluble proteins. However, sialic acids have been also observed in ''Drosophila'' embryos and other insects. Generally, plants seem not to contain or display sialic acids. In humans, the brain has the highest sialic acid content, where these acids play an important role in neural transmission and ganglioside structure in synaptogenesis. More than 50 kinds of sialic ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Glycolipids
Glycolipids () are lipids with a carbohydrate attached by a glycosidic (covalent) bond. Their role is to maintain the stability of the cell membrane and to facilitate cellular recognition, which is crucial to the immune response and in the connections that allow cells to connect to one another to form tissues. Glycolipids are found on the surface of all eukaryotic cell membranes, where they extend from the phospholipid bilayer into the extracellular environment. Structure The essential feature of a glycolipid is the presence of a monosaccharide or oligosaccharide bound to a lipid moiety. The most common lipids in cellular membranes are glycerolipids and sphingolipids, which have glycerol or a sphingosine backbones, respectively. Fatty acids are connected to this backbone, so that the lipid as a whole has a polar head and a non-polar tail. The lipid bilayer of the cell membrane consists of two layers of lipids, with the inner and outer surfaces of the membrane made up of t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Glycoproteins
Glycoproteins are proteins which contain oligosaccharide (sugar) chains covalently attached to amino acid side-chains. The carbohydrate is attached to the protein in a cotranslational or posttranslational modification. This process is known as glycosylation. Secreted extracellular proteins are often glycosylated. In proteins that have segments extending extracellularly, the extracellular segments are also often glycosylated. Glycoproteins are also often important integral membrane proteins, where they play a role in cell–cell interactions. It is important to distinguish endoplasmic reticulum-based glycosylation of the secretory system from reversible cytosolic-nuclear glycosylation. Glycoproteins of the cytosol and nucleus can be modified through the reversible addition of a single GlcNAc residue that is considered reciprocal to phosphorylation and the functions of these are likely to be an additional regulatory mechanism that controls phosphorylation-based signalling. In ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Neuraminic Acid
Neuraminic acid (5-amino-3,5-dideoxy-D-''glycero''-D-''galacto''-non-2-ulosonic acid) is an Sugar acid, acidic (in particular Sugar acid#ulosonic acid, ulosonic) amino sugar, amino sugar with a backbone formed by nine carbon atoms. Although 9-carbon sugars do not occur naturally, neuraminic acid may be regarded as a theoretical 9-carbon ketose in which the first link of the chain (the –CH2OH at Monosaccharide#Linear-chain monosaccharides, position 1) is Oxidation, oxidised into a carboxyl group (–C(=O)OH), the hydroxyl group at position 3 is deoxidised (oxygen is removed from it), and the hydroxyl group at position 5 is substituted with an amino group (–NH2). Neuraminic acid may also be visualized as the product of an aldol condensation, aldol-condensation of pyruvic acid and D-mannosamine (2-amino-2-deoxy-mannose). Neuraminic acid does not occur naturally, but many of its derivatives are found widely distributed in animal tissues and in bacteria, especially in glycopro ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Beta Neuraminic Acid
Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; or ) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Ancient Greek, beta represented the voiced bilabial plosive . In Modern Greek, it represents the voiced bilabial fricative while in borrowed words is instead commonly transcribed as μπ. Letters that arose from beta include the Roman letter and the Cyrillic letters and . Name Like the names of most other Greek letters, the name of beta was adopted from the acrophonic name of the corresponding letter in Phoenician, which was the common Semitic word ('house', compare and ). In Greek, the name was , pronounced in Ancient Greek. It is spelled in modern monotonic orthography and pronounced . History The letter beta was derived from the Phoenician letter beth . The letter Β had the largest number of highly divergent local forms. Besides the standard form (either rounded or pointed, ), there were forms as varied as ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Phosphate
Phosphates are the naturally occurring form of the element phosphorus. In chemistry, a phosphate is an anion, salt, functional group or ester derived from a phosphoric acid. It most commonly means orthophosphate, a derivative of orthophosphoric acid, phosphoric acid . The phosphate or orthophosphate ion is derived from phosphoric acid by the removal of three protons . Removal of one proton gives the dihydrogen phosphate ion while removal of two protons gives the hydrogen phosphate ion . These names are also used for salts of those anions, such as ammonium dihydrogen phosphate and trisodium phosphate. File:3-phosphoric-acid-3D-balls.png, Phosphoricacid File:2-dihydrogenphosphate-3D-balls.png, Dihydrogenphosphate File:1-hydrogenphosphate-3D-balls.png, Hydrogenphosphate File:0-phosphate-3D-balls.png, Phosphate or orthophosphate In organic chemistry, phosphate or orthophosphate is an organophosphate, an ester of orthophosphoric acid of the form where one ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sulfate
The sulfate or sulphate ion is a polyatomic anion with the empirical formula . Salts, acid derivatives, and peroxides of sulfate are widely used in industry. Sulfates occur widely in everyday life. Sulfates are salts of sulfuric acid and many are prepared from that acid. Spelling "Sulfate" is the spelling recommended by IUPAC, but "sulphate" was traditionally used in British English. Structure The sulfate anion consists of a central sulfur atom surrounded by four equivalent oxygen atoms in a tetrahedral arrangement. The symmetry of the isolated anion is the same as that of methane. The sulfur atom is in the +6 oxidation state while the four oxygen atoms are each in the −2 state. The sulfate ion carries an overall charge of −2 and it is the conjugate base of the bisulfate (or hydrogensulfate) ion, , which is in turn the conjugate base of , sulfuric acid. Organic sulfate esters, such as dimethyl sulfate, are covalent compounds and esters of sulfuric acid. The tetrahedral ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Methyl
In organic chemistry, a methyl group is an alkyl derived from methane, containing one carbon atom bonded to three hydrogen atoms, having chemical formula (whereas normal methane has the formula ). In formulas, the group is often abbreviated as Me. This hydrocarbon group occurs in many organic compounds. It is a very stable group in most molecules. While the methyl group is usually part of a larger molecule, bonded to the rest of the molecule by a single covalent bond (), it can be found on its own in any of three forms: methanide anion (), methylium cation () or methyl radical (). The anion has eight valence electrons, the radical seven and the cation six. All three forms are highly reactive and rarely observed. Methyl cation, anion, and radical Methyl cation The methylium cation () exists in the gas phase, but is otherwise not encountered. Some compounds are considered to be sources of the cation, and this simplification is used pervasively in organic chemistry. For exam ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |