Leloir pathway
The Leloir pathway is a metabolic pathway for the catabolism of D-galactose. It is named after Luis Federico Leloir, who first described it.[1] [2] [3] [4]
In the first step,
D-galactose-1-phosphate uridylyltransferase converts galactose 1-phosphate to UDP-galactose using UDP-glucose as the uridine diphosphate source. Finally, UDP-galactose 4-epimerase recycles the UDP-galactose to UDP-glucose for the transferase reaction. Additionally, phosphoglucomutase converts the D-glucose 1-phosphate to D-glucose 6-phosphate.[6]