International Scholarly Research Network ISRN Biochemistry Volume 2012, Article ID 506160, 36 pages doi:10.5402/2012/506160 Review Article Ganglioside Biochemistry Thomas Kolter Program Unit Membrane Biology & Lipid Biochemistry, LiMES, University of Bonn, Gerhard-Domagk Straße 1, 53121 Bonn, Germany Correspondence should be addressed to Thomas Kolter,
[email protected] Received 18 September 2012; Accepted 9 October 2012 Academic Editors: H. Itoh and B. Penke Copyright © 2012 Thomas Kolter. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Gangliosides are sialic acid-containing glycosphingolipids. They occur especially on the cellular surfaces of neuronal cells, where they form a complex pattern, but are also found in many other cell types. The paper provides a general overview on their structures, occurrence, and metabolism. Key functional, biochemical, and pathobiochemical aspects are summarized. 1. Introduction 2. Structure and Nomenclature Together with glycoproteins and glycosaminoglycans, gly- In their structures, gangliosides combine a glycan and a lipid cosphingolipids (GSLs) contribute to the glycocalyx that portion and contribute to both, the cellular lipidome and covers eukaryotic cell surfaces. Gangliosides are sialic acid- the glycome/sialome [15]. A great variety of carbohydrate containing glycosphingolipids and provide a significant part sequences are found within the GSLs [16], including the of cell surface glycans on neuronal cells. GSLs are lipids gangliosides [17]. Although carbohydrate residues of dif- that contain a sphingoid base and one or more sugar ferent structure, linkage, and anomeric configuration occur residues [1]. Sialic acids (Figure 1) are nine-carbon sugars in GSLs, only a limited number of the so-called series biosynthetically formed from N-acetylmannosamine and with characteristic carbohydrate sequences are found within phosphoenolpyruvate [2, 3].