Function
This four-carbon dicarboxylic acid is a protonated variant of oxaloacetate, which is an intermediate of the citric acid cycle and gluconeogenesis. Oxaloacetate forms upon oxidation of L-malate, catalysed by malate dehydrogenase, and reacts with Acetyl-CoA to form citrate, catalysed by citrate synthase. It also forms in the mesophyll of plants by the condensation of CO2 with phosphoenolpyruvate, catalysed by PEP Carboxykinase. It can arise from pyruvate via an anaplerotic reaction. Oxaloacetate is also a potent inhibitor of Complex II.
Read more about this topic: Oxaloacetic Acid
Famous quotes containing the word function:
“Uses are always much broader than functions, and usually far less contentious. The word function carries overtones of purpose and propriety, of concern with why something was developed rather than with how it has actually been found useful. The function of automobiles is to transport people and objects, but they are used for a variety of other purposes—as homes, offices, bedrooms, henhouses, jetties, breakwaters, even offensive weapons.”
—Frank Smith (b. 1928)
“As a medium of exchange,... worrying regulates intimacy, and it is often an appropriate response to ordinary demands that begin to feel excessive. But from a modernized Freudian view, worrying—as a reflex response to demand—never puts the self or the objects of its interest into question, and that is precisely its function in psychic life. It domesticates self-doubt.”
—Adam Phillips, British child psychoanalyst. “Worrying and Its Discontents,” in On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored, p. 58, Harvard University Press (1993)
“Literature does not exist in a vacuum. Writers as such have a definite social function exactly proportional to their ability as writers. This is their main use.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)