Choline kinase (CK) and ethanolamine kinase (EK) catalyzethe phosphorylation of choline/ethanolamine tophosphocholine/phosphoethanolamine. This is the first enzyme in thebiosynthesis of phosphatidylcholine/phosphatidylethanolamine in allanimal cells. The highly purified CKs from mammalian sources andtheir recombinant gene products have been shown to have EK activityalso, indicating that both activities reside on the same protein.The choline kinase-like protein encoded by CHKL belongs to thecholine/ethanolamine kinase family; however, its exact function isnot known. Read-through transcripts are expressed from this locusthat include exons from the downstream CPT1B locus. [provided byRefSeq, Jun 2009].