sialic acids
Sign in to saveAlso known as (4S,5R,6R,7S,8R)-5-acetamido-4,6,7,8,9-pentahydroxy-2-oxononanoic acid, sialic acid, N-acylneuraminic acids
any of the N-acylneuraminic acids and their esters and other derivatives of the alcoholic hydroxy groups
In the Vinony graph
Within Vinony's link graph, sialic acids is referenced by 249 other articles, and connects out to Adenoviridae, glycoprotein and glycolipid.
It sits within the topics Carbohydrate chemistry, Monosaccharides and Sugar acids.
Its subject is documented across 29 Wikipedia language editions.
Research
19,321 papers- Sialic Acids in Nonenveloped Virus Infections.Advances in carbohydrate chemistry and biochemistry · 2019
- Sialic Acids and Their Influence on Human NK Cell Function.Cells · 2021
- Sialic acids in cancer biology and immunity-recent advancements.The Journal of biological chemistry · 2025
- Sialic Acids: Sweet modulators fueling cancer cells and domesticating the tumor microenvironment.Cancer letters · 2025
- Intramolecular Lactones of Sialic Acids.International journal of molecular sciences · 2020
via PubMed
~13 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Sialic acids are a class of alpha-keto acid sugars with a nine-carbon backbone. The term "sialic acid" (from Greek σίαλον (síalon) 'saliva') was first introduced by Swedish biochemist Gunnar Blix in 1952. The most common member of this group is N-acetylneuraminic acid (Neu5Ac or NANA) found in animals and some prokaryotes.
Sialic acids are found widely distributed in animal tissues and related forms are found to a lesser extent in other organisms like in some micro-algae, bacteria and archaea. Sialic acids are commonly part of glycoproteins, glycolipids or gangliosides, where they decorate the end of sugar chains at the surface of cells or soluble proteins. However, sialic acids have been also observed in Drosophila embryos and other insects. Generally, plants seem not to contain or display sialic acids.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “sialic acids” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.