The “Kennedy pathway” as the majour route of PC and PE synthesis

From LipidomicsWiki

Mammalian cells derive the bulk of their PC from the “Kennedy pathway” described in the work of Kennedy and coworkers almost 40 years ago that is located at the cytosolic side of the endoplasmatic reticulum. Here the first step is the phosphorylation of choline by the enzyme choline kinase.

The formed phosphocholine is subsequently activated by a phosphate cytidylyltransferase that generates CDP-choline. Finally the enzyme choline phosphotransferase transfers the choline group of CDP-choline to diacylglycerol (DAG) which leads to the formation of PC. Alternatively, PE is generated via the “Kennedy pathway” employing similar biochemical reaction steps (Fig. 24 above). The PE thus formed can be sequentially methylated on its primary amine using S-adenosylmethionine as the methyl donor by the enzyme PE-N-Methyl- Transferase (PEMT) to form PC after the sequential transfer of 3 methyl groups. These sequential reactions are termed the PEMT pathway


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