Acetylserotonin O-methyltransferase - Class of Enzyme and Function

Class of Enzyme and Function

N-Acetylserotonin O-methyltransferase can be classified under three types of enzyme functional groups: transferases, one-carbon group transferers, and methyltransferases.

It catalyzes two reactions in the tryptophan metabolism pathway, and both can be traced back to serotonin. Serotonin has many fates in this pathway, and N- Acetylserotonin O-methyltransferase catalyzes reactions in two of these fates. The enzyme has been studied most for its catalysis of the final step of the pathway from serotonin to melatonin, but it also catalyzes one of the reactions in the many step process of serotonin → 5-Methoxy-indolacetate. Figure 1 is a clear picture of where N- Acetylserotonin O-methyltransferase is used during tryptophan metabolism (see two locations of enzyme number 2.1.1.4).

Figure 1.


Read more about this topic:  Acetylserotonin O-methyltransferase

Famous quotes containing the words class of, class and/or function:

    The prostitute is the scapegoat for everyone’s sins, and few people care whether she is justly treated or not. Good people have spent thousands of pounds in efforts to reform her, poets have written about her, essayists and orators have made her the subject of some of their most striking rhetoric; perhaps no class of people has been so much abused, and alternatively sentimentalized over as prostitutes have been but one thing they have never yet had, and that is simple legal justice.
    —Alison Neilans. “Justice for the Prostitute—Lady Astor’s Bill,” Equal Rights (September 19, 1925)

    Mankind divides itself into two classes,—benefactors and malefactors. The second class is vast, the first a handful.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Uses are always much broader than functions, and usually far less contentious. The word function carries overtones of purpose and propriety, of concern with why something was developed rather than with how it has actually been found useful. The function of automobiles is to transport people and objects, but they are used for a variety of other purposes—as homes, offices, bedrooms, henhouses, jetties, breakwaters, even offensive weapons.
    Frank Smith (b. 1928)