Substrate promiscuities of a bacterial galactokinase and a glucose-1-phosphate uridyltransferase enable xylose salvaging

A bacterial galactokinase ( Sc GalK) phosphorylates xylose to xylose 1-phosphate, and allows xylose recycling via a simple UDP-xylose 'salvage pathway', which significantly reduces cofactor requirements compared to the known pentose phosphate pathway.