Ubiquitin specific peptidase 10, also known as USP10, 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...

 which in humans is encoded by the USP10 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

Ubiquitin

Ubiquitin

Ubiquitin is a small regulatory protein that has been found in almost all tissues of eukaryotic organisms. Among other functions, it directs protein recycling.Ubiquitin can be attached to proteins and label them for destruction...

 is a highly conserved protein that is covalently linked to other proteins to regulate their function and degradation. This gene encodes a member of the ubiquitin-specific protease family of 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...

s. The enzyme specifically cleaves ubiquitin from ubiquitin-conjugated protein substrates. The protein is found in the nucleus and cytoplasm. It functions as a co-factor of the DNA-bound androgen receptor

Androgen receptor

The androgen receptor , also known as NR3C4 , is a type of nuclear receptor that is activated by binding of either of the androgenic hormones testosterone or dihydrotestosterone in the cytoplasm and then translocating into the nucleus...

 complex, and is inhibited by a protein in the Ras-GTPase

GTPase

GTPases are a large family of hydrolase enzymes that can bind and hydrolyze guanosine triphosphate . The GTP binding and hydrolysis takes place in the highly conserved G domain common to all GTPases.-Functions:...

 pathway. The human genome contains several pseudogene

Pseudogene

Pseudogenes are dysfunctional relatives of known genes that have lost their protein-coding ability or are otherwise no longer expressed in the cell...

s similar to this gene.

Further reading