Human Gene Set: BIOCARTA_VITCB_PATHWAY

For the Mouse gene set with the same name, see BIOCARTA_VITCB_PATHWAY

Standard name BIOCARTA_VITCB_PATHWAY
Systematic name M15422
Brief description Vitamin C in the Brain
Full description or abstract Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) was first identified by virtue of the essential role it plays in collagen modification, preventing the nutritional deficiency scurvy. Vitamin C acts as a cofactor for hydroxylase enzymes that post-translationally modify collagen to increase the strength and elasticity of tissues. Vitamin C reduces the metal ion prosthetic groups of many enzymes, maintaining activity of enzymes, also acts as an anti-oxidant. Although the prevention of scurvy through modification of collagen may be the most obvious role for vitamin C, it is not necessarily the only role of vitamin C. Svct1 and Svct2 are ascorbate transporters for vitamin C import into tissues and into cells. Both of these transporters specifically transport reduced L-ascorbic acid against a concentration gradient using the intracellular sodium gradient to drive ascorbate transport. Svct1 is expressed in epithelial cells in the intestine, upregulated in cellular models for intestinal epithelium and appears to be responsible for the import of dietary vitamin C from the intestinal lumen. The vitamin C imported from the intestine is present in plasma at approximately 50 uM, almost exclusively in the reduced form, and is transported to tissues to play a variety of roles. Svct2 imports reduced ascorbate from the plasma into very active tissues like the brain. Deletion in mice of the gene for Svct2 revealed that ascorbate is required for normal development of the lungs and brain during pregnancy. A high concentration of vitamin C in neurons of the developing brain may help protect the developing brain from free radical damage. The oxidized form of ascorbate, dehydroascorbic acid, is transported into a variety of cells by the glucose transporter Glut-1. Glut-1, Glut-3 and Glut-4 can transport dehydroascorbate, but may not transport significant quantities of ascorbic acid in vivo.
Collection C2: Curated
      CP: Canonical Pathways
            CP:BIOCARTA: BioCarta Pathways
Source publication  
Exact source  
Related gene sets  
External links https://data.broadinstitute.org/gsea-msigdb/msigdb/biocarta/human/h_vitCBPathway.gif
Filtered by similarity ?
Source species Homo sapiens
Contributed by BioCarta
Source platform or
identifier namespace
Human_RefSeq
Dataset references  
Download gene set format: grp | gmt | xml | json | TSV metadata
Compute overlaps ? (show collections to investigate for overlap with this gene set)
Compendia expression profiles ? NG-CHM interactive heatmaps
(Please note that clustering takes a few seconds)
GTEx compendium
Human tissue compendium (Novartis)
Global Cancer Map (Broad Institute)
NCI-60 cell lines (National Cancer Institute)

Legacy heatmaps (PNG)
GTEx compendium
Human tissue compendium (Novartis)
Global Cancer Map (Broad Institute)
NCI-60 cell lines (National Cancer Institute)
Advanced query Further investigate these 11 genes
Gene families ? Categorize these 11 genes by gene family
Show members (show 15 source identifiers mapped to 11 genes)
Version history 7.0: Changed members. Upgraded to final version of Biocarta.

See MSigDB license terms here. Please note that certain gene sets have special access terms.