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摘要

The current issue of PNAS reports the discovery and functional characterization of EDI3, a key enzyme of choline metabolism (Stewart et al. 2012). EDI3 cleaves glycerophosphocholine to release choline and glycerol-3-phosphate. This represents a critical step, which provides membrane phospholipids essential for the activation of several signalling pathways. The reaction as such was already known as the "Kennedy pathway". However, a key enzymatic protein positioned at the start of this pathway remained unidentified-and was now discovered to be EDI3 (Stewart et al. 2012).