Glycogen synthase can use glucose as an acceptor.

Glycogen synthase purified to homogeneity from rabbit skeletal muscle is essentially free of carbohydrate and shows no activity in the absence of added acceptor. It can use glucose as a substrate converting it to a glucose disaccharide in the presence of UDP-glucose as cosubstrate. The reaction is dependent on time, and on UDP-glucose, glucose, and enzyme concentrations. The product of the single step reaction co-chromatographs in two solvent systems with maltose. The glucose disaccharide produced in the reaction with UDP-[14-C]glucose and nonradioactive glucose as well as with nonradioactive UDP-glucoes and [14-C]glucose is labeled asymmetrically. The linkage is characterized as alpha-1,4 and therefore the disaccharide is identified as maltose.