Abstract This review commemorates the 50th anniversary of Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded to Luis F. Leloir ‘for his discovery sugar-nucleotides and their role biosynthesis carbohydrates’. He co-workers discovered that activated forms simple sugars, such as UDP-glucose UDP-galactose, are essential intermediates interconversion sugars. They elucidated biosynthetic pathways for sucrose starch, w...

much higher compared to hexokinase12. Although Lau et al. have provided convincing evidence for this switching effect in cells, its effect within whole organisms is not yet known. The switching hypothesis may open a new avenue for the understanding of growth factor receptor signaling by metabolic flux by way of the hexosamine pathway. The lattice model provided by Lau et al.1 is also intriguing...