Glucose molecular representation

Fig. 8. Head-group additions to ceramide in a schematic representation. Starting with a given molecular subspecies of ceramide (Fig. 7), head groups can be added to make sphingomyelin by addition of a phospho-choline moiety (by transesterification from phosphatidylcholine), phosphate (from ATP), glucose (from UDP-Glc), galactose (from UDP-Gal), or a fatty acid (by transacylation from phosphatidylcholine or phosphatidylethanolamine). Subsequent metabolites are formed by sequential carbohydrate addition (from UDP-sugars except for GDP-fucose, GDP-mannose and CMP-sialic acid) or addition of sulfate.

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