Aminoacyltransferases () are acyltransferase enzymes which act upon an

amino group In chemistry, amines (, ) are compounds and functional groups that contain a basic nitrogen atom with a lone pair. Amines are formally derivatives of ammonia (), wherein one or more hydrogen atoms have been replaced by a substituent such ...

. For instance,

aminoacyl tRNA synthetase An aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase (aaRS or ARS), also called tRNA-ligase, is an enzyme that attaches the appropriate amino acid onto its corresponding tRNA. It does so by catalyzing the transesterification of a specific cognate amino acid or its pre ...

s attach an aminoacid through esterification to the corresponding tRNA. The activation of amino acids it aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase requires

hydrolysis Hydrolysis (; ) is any chemical reaction in which a molecule of water breaks one or more chemical bonds. The term is used broadly for substitution, elimination, and solvation reactions in which water is the nucleophile. Biological hydrolys ...

of ATP to

AMP #REDIRECT Amp {{Redirect category shell, {{R from other capitalisation{{R from ambiguous page ...

plus PP_i. The

aminoacyl-tRNA Aminoacyl-tRNA (also aa-tRNA or charged tRNA) is tRNA to which its cognate amino acid is chemically bonded (charged). The aa-tRNA, along with particular elongation factors, deliver the amino acid to the ribosome for incorporation into the polypept ...

molecule has close relationships with elongation facts like

EF-Tu EF-Tu (elongation factor thermo unstable) is a prokaryotic elongation factor responsible for catalyzing the binding of an aminoacyl-tRNA (aa-tRNA) to the ribosome. It is a G-protein, and facilitates the selection and binding of an aa-tRNA to t ...

Peptidyl transferase The peptidyl transferase is an aminoacyltransferase () as well as the primary enzymatic function of the ribosome, which forms peptide bonds between adjacent amino acids using tRNAs during the translation process of protein biosynthesis. The subs ...

s are also a type of aminoacyltransferase that catalyze the formation of peptide bonds, as well as the hydrolytic step that leads to the release of newly synthesized proteins off the tRNA.

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