N-Acetylneuraminate Pyruvate Lyase (NPL)

N-acetylneuraminate pyruvate lyase (EC 4.1.3.3) controls the cellular concentration of sialic acid by catalyzing the conversion of sialic acid into acylmannosamines and pyruvate.By large-scale sequence analysis of clones obtained from a fetal brain cDNA library, Wu et al. (2005) cloned a splice variant of NPL. The deduced 301-amino acid splice variant, which they called NPLV2, contains an N-terminal dihydrodipicolinate synthase (DHDPS) domain and 5 putative N-terminal phosphorylation sites. RT-PCR detected highest expression in liver, kidney, and peripheral blood leukocytes, and lower expression in placenta, pancreas, spleen, thymus, ovary, and small intestine. By database analysis, Wu et al. (2005) identified 3 other NPL splice variants.