Creative Enzymes has marched into the top tier of the enzyme industry for years. Having built a comprehensive system for enzyme activity testing, Creative Enzymes won the business of thousands of clients. Our strong growth is supported by the advanced instruments, knowledgeable enzymologists, skillful experimental operations, and professional services. We can offer rapid and accurate assays for transferases such as N-acetylhexosamine 1-kinase.

N-Acetylhexosamine 1-kinase (NahK) is a unique enzyme in bifidobacteria. This enzyme is a member of transferases, catalyzing the phosphorylation of GlcNAc and GalNAc at the anomeric C1 position. The enzymatic reaction needs ATP acting as the phosphate group donor. NahK is the first known anomeric kinase which acts on gluco-type substrate. NahK also catalyzes the phosphorylation of N-acetylmannosamine, talose, and mannose.

Bifidobacteria are known as probiotics because they provide benefits for human health, including, for example, the stimulation of immunity, prevention of infectious diarrhea, suppression of inflammatory, and allergic responses. Existing in the unique environment, bifidobacteria possess various glycosidases and other metabolic enzymes to gain energy from indigestible oligosaccharides and glycoconjugates. N-acetylhexosamine 1-kinase is one of these enzymes which participates in the galacto-N-biose (Gal- β1,3-GalNAc, GNB) and lacto-N-biose (Gal- β1,3-GlcNAc, LNB) metabolic pathway. The GNB/LNB pathway is an energy-saving variation of the Leloir pathway, which is a common galactose metabolic pathway presented in most organisms. It can be seen that NahK is important for the cell growth and energy generation. Besides, NahK is also studied for potential use in biosynthesis. Its ability to produce various 1-phosphate sugars with a relatively wide specificity has been applied to enzymatic methods to produce oligosaccharides and sugar 1-phosphates. Noticing the position in organisms’ growth and the significances in chemical production, an increasing number of studies are oriented to commercialization of the enzyme. With the reported crystal structures of NahK, deeper understandings on this enzyme were realized. Meanwhile, Creative Enzymes offers precise activity measurement to facilitate further research on this enzyme.

Figure: The crystal structure for N-Acetylhexosamine 1-kinase (ligand free).
Reference: Mayo Sato et al. Biochimica et Biophysica Acta. 2015 1854: 333–340.

Creative Enzymes is one of the few companies which can provide precise quantification of N-acetylhexosamine activity. Our results are guaranteed with high reliability, high accuracy, as well as low variations. Creative Enzymes is the best partner who supports your research in an efficient and effective way.