Function
The main enzyme involved in glycogen polymerisation, glycogen synthase, can only add to an existing chain of at least 4 glucose residues. Glycogenin acts as the primer, to which further glucose monomers may be added. It achieves this by catalyzing the addition of glucose to itself (autocatalysis) by first binding glucose from UDP-glucose to the hydroxyl group of Tyr-194. Seven more glucoses can be added, each derived from UDP-glucose, by glycogenin's glucosyltransferase activity. Once sufficient residues have been added, glycogen synthase takes over extending the chain. Glycogenin remains covalently attached to the reducing end of the glycogen molecule.
Evidence accumulates that a priming protein may be a fundamental property of polysaccharide synthesis in general; the molecular details of mammalian glycogen biogenesis may serve as a useful model for other systems.
Read more about this topic: Glycogenin
Famous quotes containing the word function:
“The function of comedy is to dispel ... unconsciousness by turning the searchlight of the keenest moral and intellectual analysis right on to it.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“The function of literature, through all its mutations, has been to make us aware of the particularity of selves, and the high authority of the self in its quarrel with its society and its culture. Literature is in that sense subversive.”
—Lionel Trilling (1905–1975)
“Morality and its victim, the mother—what a terrible picture! Is there indeed anything more terrible, more criminal, than our glorified sacred function of motherhood?”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)