Sialidase-2 is an
enzyme
An enzyme () is a protein that acts as a biological catalyst by accelerating chemical reactions. The molecules upon which enzymes may act are called substrate (chemistry), substrates, and the enzyme converts the substrates into different mol ...
that in humans is encoded by the ''NEU2''
gene
In biology, the word gene has two meanings. The Mendelian gene is a basic unit of heredity. The molecular gene is a sequence of nucleotides in DNA that is transcribed to produce a functional RNA. There are two types of molecular genes: protei ...
.
This gene belongs to a family of glycohydrolytic
enzymes
An enzyme () is a protein that acts as a biological catalyst by accelerating chemical reactions. The molecules upon which enzymes may act are called substrates, and the enzyme converts the substrates into different molecules known as pro ...
which remove
sialic acid
Sialic acids are a class of alpha-keto acid sugars with a nine-carbon backbone.
The term "sialic acid" () was first introduced by Swedish biochemist Gunnar Blix in 1952. The most common member of this group is ''N''-acetylneuraminic acid ...
residues from
glycoproteins
Glycoproteins are proteins which contain oligosaccharide (sugar) chains covalently attached to amino acid side-chains. The carbohydrate is attached to the protein in a cotranslational or posttranslational modification. This process is known a ...
and
glycolipids. Expression studies in
COS-7 cells confirmed that this gene encodes a functional sialidase. Its cytosolic localization was demonstrated by cell fractionation experiments.
References
Further reading
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External links
PDBe-KBprovides an overview of all the structure information available in the PDB for Human Sialidase-2
Human proteins
{{gene-2-stub