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 source
s 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. Read-through transcripts are expressed from this locus that include exons from the downstream CPT1B locus. [provided by RefSeq, Jun 2009]
The genes CHKB and CPT1B are adjacent on chromosome 22 and read-through transcripts are expressed that include exons from both loci. The read-through transcripts are candidates for nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) and are unlikely to express proteins. [provide