Sialic Acid Biosynthesis: Stereochemistry and Mechanism of the Reaction Catalyzed by the Mammalian UDP-<i>N</i>-Acetylglucosamine 2-Epimerase
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The bifunctional enzyme, UDP-N-acetylglucosamine 2-epimerase/ManNAc kinase, catalyzes the first two steps in the biosynthesis of the sialic acids in mammals. The epimerase domain converts UDP-GlcNAc into ManNAc and UDP. This paper demonstrates that alpha-ManNAc is the first formed anomer and therefore the reaction proceeds with a net retention of configuration at C-1. Studies in deuterated buffer show that solvent-derived deuterium is quantitatively incorporated into the C-2 position of the product during catalysis, but it is not incorporated into the remaining pool of substrate. This indicates that the inversion of stereochemistry is ultimately brought about by the removal and replacement of a proton at C-2 and is consistent with a two-base mechanism. Studies with (18)O-labeled UDP-GlcNAc show that the anomeric oxygen of the glycosyl phosphate bond departs with the UDP product and therefore the net hydrolysis reaction involves C-O bond cleavage. Incubation of the putative intermediate, 2-acetamidoglucal, with the enzyme resulted in a slow hydration reaction to give the product, ManNAc. Additional kinetic isotope effect and positional isotope exchange (PIX) experiments address the nature of the rate-determining step of the reaction and show that C-H bond cleavage is not rate limiting. Overall, these results support a reaction mechanism involving an anti-elimination of UDP to give 2-acetamidoglucal, followed by a syn-addition of water.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".