Function
Many cellular proteins cleave (hydrolyze) nucleoside triphosphates–adenosine triphosphate (ATP) or guanosine triphosphate (GTP)–to their diphosphate forms (ADP and GDP) as a source of energy and to drive conformational changes. These changes in turn affect the structural, enzymatic, or signalling properties of the protein.
Nucleotide exchange factors actively assist in the exchange of depleted nucleoside diphosphates for fresh nucleoside triphosphates. NEFs are specific for the nucleotides they exchange (ADP or GDP, but not both) and are often specific to a single protein or class of proteins with which they interact.
Read more about this topic: Nucleotide Exchange Factor
Famous quotes containing the word function:
“Any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information—hence, something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
“As a medium of exchange,... worrying regulates intimacy, and it is often an appropriate response to ordinary demands that begin to feel excessive. But from a modernized Freudian view, worrying—as a reflex response to demand—never puts the self or the objects of its interest into question, and that is precisely its function in psychic life. It domesticates self-doubt.”
—Adam Phillips, British child psychoanalyst. “Worrying and Its Discontents,” in On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored, p. 58, Harvard University Press (1993)
“Think of the tools in a tool-box: there is a hammer, pliers, a saw, a screwdriver, a rule, a glue-pot, nails and screws.—The function of words are as diverse as the functions of these objects.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)