Hi,
Can anyone help me with my understanding of what the
importance of phosphorylation of glucose (or other sugars)
in the cell is.
Is there a significant chemical difference between
glucose-1-phosphate and glucose-6-phosphate?
What I have been able to gather from reading is that
1) phosphorylation helps keep the monosaccarides in the cell
by making them anions
2) phosphorylated sugars are the forms that participate in
biochemical reactions
But, does phosphorylation of glucose to glucose-1-phosphate
stabilize the hemiacetal form in the same way that making an
acetal at the 1 position would? Does phosphorylation at the
6 position also stabilize the ring form of glucose? Or, is
the difference between G-1-P and G-6-P that G-6-P is still a
hemiacetal and therefore more reactive or able to linearize?
And then, is it possible that one role of phosphorylation to
G-1-P is to keep the sugar from being a reactive molecule by
stbilizing it in the non-aldehyde conformation, protecting
the cell from unwanted reactions?
Thanks,
Chris Pung
