Abstract
Glycogen is conventionally considered as a transient energy reserve that can be rapidly synthesized for glucose accumulation and mobilized for ATP production. However, this conception is not completely applicable to prokaryotes due to glycogen structural heterogeneity. A number of studies noticed that glycogen with small average chain length gc in bacteria has the potential to degrade slowly, which might prolong bacterial environment survival. This phenomenon was previously examined and later formulated as the durable energy storage mechanism hypothesis. Although recent research has been warming to the hypothesis, experimental validation is still missing at current stage. In this review, we summarized recent progress of the hypothesis, provided a supporting mathematical model, and explored the technical pitfalls that shall be avoided in glycogen study.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the anonymous reviewers for their genuine comments and suggestions to improve the paper quality.
Funding
Dr. Liang Wang would like to thank the Startup Foundation for Excellent Researchers at Xuzhou Medical University (No. D2016007), Innovative and Entrepreneurial Talent Scheme of Jiangsu Province (2017), Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (No. BK20180997), National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31900022), and the Open Project from the Key Laboratory of Carbohydrate Chemistry and Biotechnology, Ministry of Education at Jiangnan University (No. KLCCB-KF201902). Dr. Ting Yang would like to thank the financial support of Xuzhou Science and Technology Plan (No. KC19052).
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Wang, L., Wang, M., Wise, M.J. et al. Recent progress in the structure of glycogen serving as a durable energy reserve in bacteria. World J Microbiol Biotechnol 36, 14 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11274-019-2795-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11274-019-2795-6