N-acetylmuramoyl-L-alanine amidase
Encyclopedia
In enzymology, a N-acetylmuramoyl-L-alanine amidase is an enzyme
Enzyme
Enzymes are proteins that catalyze chemical reactions. In enzymatic reactions, the molecules at the beginning of the process, called substrates, are converted into different molecules, called products. Almost all chemical reactions in a biological cell need enzymes in order to occur at rates...

 that catalyzes
Catalysis
Catalysis is the change in rate of a chemical reaction due to the participation of a substance called a catalyst. Unlike other reagents that participate in the chemical reaction, a catalyst is not consumed by the reaction itself. A catalyst may participate in multiple chemical transformations....

 a chemical reaction
Chemical reaction
A chemical reaction is a process that leads to the transformation of one set of chemical substances to another. Chemical reactions can be either spontaneous, requiring no input of energy, or non-spontaneous, typically following the input of some type of energy, such as heat, light or electricity...

 that cleaves the link between N-acetylmuramoyl residues and L-amino acid
Amino acid
Amino acids are molecules containing an amine group, a carboxylic acid group and a side-chain that varies between different amino acids. The key elements of an amino acid are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen...

 residues in certain cell-wall
Cell wall
The cell wall is the tough, usually flexible but sometimes fairly rigid layer that surrounds some types of cells. It is located outside the cell membrane and provides these cells with structural support and protection, and also acts as a filtering mechanism. A major function of the cell wall is to...

 glycopeptide
Glycopeptide
Glycopeptides are peptides that contain carbohydrate moieties covalently attached to the side chains of the amino acid residues that constitute the peptide. Over the past few decades it has been recognised that glycans on cell surface and those bound to proteins play a critical role in biology...

s.

This enzyme belongs to the family of hydrolase
Hydrolase
In biochemistry, a hydrolase is an enzyme that catalyzes the hydrolysis of a chemical bond. For example, an enzyme that catalyzed the following reaction is a hydrolase:-Nomenclature:...

s, specifically those acting on carbon-nitrogen bonds other than peptide bonds in linear amides. The systematic name of this enzyme class is peptidoglycan amidohydrolase. Other names in common use include acetylmuramyl-L-alanine amidase, N-acetylmuramyl-L-alanine amidase, N-acylmuramyl-L-alanine amidase, acetylmuramoyl-alanine amidase, N-acetylmuramic acid L-alanine amidase, acetylmuramyl-alanine amidase, N-acetylmuramylalanine amidase, murein hydrolase, N-acetylmuramoyl-L-alanine amidase type I, and N-acetylmuramoyl-L-alanine amidase type II. This enzyme participates in peptidoglycan biosynthesis.

Structural studies

As of late 2007, 13 structures
Tertiary structure
In biochemistry and molecular biology, the tertiary structure of a protein or any other macromolecule is its three-dimensional structure, as defined by the atomic coordinates.-Relationship to primary structure:...

 have been solved for this class of enzymes, with PDB
Protein Data Bank
The Protein Data Bank is a repository for the 3-D structural data of large biological molecules, such as proteins and nucleic acids....

accession codes , , , , , , , , , , , , and .
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK