Department of Bioinformatics, School of Medical Informatics and Engineering, Xuzhou Medical University, Xuzhou, 221000, Jiangsu, China.
Jiangsu Key Laboratory of New Drug Research and Clinical Pharmacy, Xuzhou Medical University, Xuzhou, 221000, Jiangsu, China.
World J Microbiol Biotechnol. 2020 Jan 2;36(1):14. doi: 10.1007/s11274-019-2795-6.
Glycogen is conventionally considered as a transient energy reserve that can be rapidly synthesized for glucose accumulation and mobilized for ATP production. However, this conception is not completely applicable to prokaryotes due to glycogen structural heterogeneity. A number of studies noticed that glycogen with small average chain length g in bacteria has the potential to degrade slowly, which might prolong bacterial environment survival. This phenomenon was previously examined and later formulated as the durable energy storage mechanism hypothesis. Although recent research has been warming to the hypothesis, experimental validation is still missing at current stage. In this review, we summarized recent progress of the hypothesis, provided a supporting mathematical model, and explored the technical pitfalls that shall be avoided in glycogen study.
糖原通常被认为是一种可迅速合成葡萄糖积累和动员用于 ATP 生产的短暂能量储备。然而，由于糖原结构的异质性，这种概念并不完全适用于原核生物。一些研究注意到，细菌中具有小平均链长 g 的糖原具有缓慢降解的潜力，这可能延长细菌环境的生存时间。这一现象以前曾被研究过，后来被表述为持久能量储存机制假说。尽管最近的研究对该假说越来越感兴趣，但在现阶段仍缺乏实验验证。在这篇综述中，我们总结了该假说的最新进展，提供了一个支持的数学模型，并探讨了在糖原研究中应避免的技术陷阱。
