Cathepsin O is an enzyme that in humans is encoded by the CTSO gene

Gene

A gene is a molecular unit of heredity of a living organism. It is a name given to some stretches of DNA and RNA that code for a type of protein or for an RNA chain that has a function in the organism. Living beings depend on genes, as they specify all proteins and functional RNA chains...

.

Function

Cathepsin O is a cysteine protease

Cysteine protease

Proteases are enzymes that degrade polypeptides. Cysteine proteases have a common catalytic mechanism that involves a nucleophilic cysteine thiol in a catalytic dyad. The first step is deprotonation of a thiol in the enzyme's active site by an adjacent amino acid with a basic side chain, usually a...

 and a member of the cathepsin

Cathepsin

Cathepsins are proteases: proteins that break apart other proteins, found in many types of cells including those in all animals. There are approximately a dozen members of this family, which are distinguished by their structure, catalytic mechanism, and which proteins they cleave...

 family and papain

Papain

Papain, also known as papaya proteinase I, is a cysteine protease enzyme present in papaya and mountain papaya .-Papain family:...

 superfamily. This proteolytic enzyme is involved in cellular protein degradation and turnover. The recombinant form of this enzyme was shown to degrade synthetic peptides typically used as substrates for cysteine proteinases and its proteolytic activity was abolished by an inhibitor of cyteine proteinase.

External links

• The MEROPS
  Merops
  Merops may refer to:* Merops , a genus of bee-eaters.* MEROPS, an on-line database for peptidases.It may also refer to several figures from Greek mythology:* King of Ethiopia, husband of Clymene, who lay with Helios and bore Phaethon...
  
  online database for peptidases and their inhibitors: C01.035