Wang Liang, Wise Michael J
School of Biomedical, Biomolecular and Chemical Sciences, The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Perth, WA 6009, Australia.
Naturwissenschaften. 2011 Sep;98(9):719-29. doi: 10.1007/s00114-011-0832-x. Epub 2011 Aug 2.
Glycogen is conventionally viewed as an energy reserve that can be rapidly mobilized for ATP production in higher organisms. However, several studies have noted that glycogen with short average chain length in some bacteria is degraded very slowly. In addition, slow utilization of glycogen is correlated with bacterial viability, that is, the slower the glycogen breakdown rate, the longer the bacterial survival time in the external environment under starvation conditions. We call that a durable energy storage mechanism (DESM). In this review, evidence from microbiology, biochemistry, and molecular biology will be assembled to support the hypothesis of glycogen as a durable energy storage compound. One method for testing the DESM hypothesis is proposed.
糖原传统上被视为一种能量储备，在高等生物中可被迅速动员用于ATP的产生。然而，一些研究指出，某些细菌中平均链长较短的糖原降解非常缓慢。此外，糖原的缓慢利用与细菌的生存能力相关，即糖原分解速率越慢，细菌在饥饿条件下于外部环境中的存活时间就越长。我们将此称为持久能量储存机制（DESM）。在这篇综述中，将汇集来自微生物学、生物化学和分子生物学的证据，以支持糖原作为一种持久能量储存化合物的假说。本文提出了一种检验DESM假说的方法。
