This reactive carbonyl compound has attracted attention recently because the Parkinson disease causative factor DJ-1 has been reported to protect proteins/metabolites from cPGA-mediated modification by catalyzing the conversion of cPGA to 3-phosphoglycerate (3PG) (Akhmadi et al., 2024; Heremans et al., 2022) (Fig. 1 A, top panel). The gene discussed is PARK7; the disease is Parkinson disease.