Choline Kinase Beta (CHKb)

Choline kinase beta is a protein found on chromosome 22 in humans.Choline kinase (CK) and ethanolamine kinase (EK) catalyze the phosphorylation of choline/ethanolamine to phosphocholine/phosphoethanolamine.

This is the first enzyme in the biosynthesis of phosphatidylcholine/phosphatidylethanolamine in all animal cells. The highly purified CKs from mammalian sources and their recombinant gene products have been shown to have EK activity also, indicating that both activities reside on the same protein. The choline kinase-like protein encoded by CHKL belongs to the choline/ethanolamine kinase family; however, its exact function is not known. At least two transcript variants encoding two different isoforms have been found for this gene, and one of the transcripts is bicistronic.