What are the role of sugar nucleotides (e.g. UDP-glucose) in the biosynthesis of glycogen and many other carbohydrate derivatives?
A.
Many of the reactions in which hexoses are transformed or polymerized involve sugar nucleotides, compounds in which the anomeric carbon of a sugar is activated by attachment to a nucleotide through a phosphate ester linkage.
B.
Sugar nucleotides are the substrates for polymerization of monosaccharides into disaccharides, glycogen, starch, cellulose, and more complex extracellular polysaccharides.
C.
They are also key intermediates in the production of the aminohexoses and deoxyhexoses found in some of these polysaccharides, and in the synthesis of vitamin C (L-ascorbic acid).
D.
UDP-glucose is the immediate donor of glucose residues in the reaction catalyzed by glycogen synthase, which promotes the transfer of the glucose residue from UDP-glucose to a nonreducing end of a branched glycogen molecule.