Polysialic acid

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please improve this article if you can. (March 2008)

Polysialic acid is an unusual posttranslational modification that occurs on neural cell adhesion molecules (NCAM). Polysialic acid is considerably anionic. This strong negative charge gives this modification the ability to change the proteins surface charge and binding ability. In the synapse, polysialation of NCAM prevents its ability to bind to NCAM's on the adjacent membrane.[1]

[edit] References

  1. ^ (2006) "ch 6", in Dityatev, Alexander and Alaa El-Husseini: Molecular Mechanisms of Synaptogenesis. New York, NY: Springer. 


 This biology article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.