In enzymology, an UDP-N-acetylglucosamine 2-epimerase 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....

 the 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...

UDP-N-acetyl-D-glucosamine UDP-N-acetyl-D-mannosamine

Hence, this enzyme has one substrate

Substrate (biochemistry)

In biochemistry, a substrate is a molecule upon which an enzyme acts. Enzymes catalyze chemical reactions involving the substrate. In the case of a single substrate, the substrate binds with the enzyme active site, and an enzyme-substrate complex is formed. The substrate is transformed into one or...

, UDP-N-acetyl-D-glucosamine, and one product

Product (chemistry)

Product are formed during chemical reactions as reagents are consumed. Products have lower energy than the reagents and are produced during the reaction according to the second law of thermodynamics. The released energy comes from changes in chemical bonds between atoms in reagent molecules and...

, UDP-N-acetyl-D-mannosamine.

This enzyme belongs to the family of isomerase

Isomerase

In biochemistry, an isomerase is an enzyme that catalyzes the structural rearrangement of isomers. Isomerases thus catalyze reactions of the formwhere B is an isomer of A.-Nomenclature:...

s, specifically those racemases and epimerases acting on carbohydrate

Carbohydrate

A carbohydrate is an organic compound with the empirical formula ; that is, consists only of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, with a hydrogen:oxygen atom ratio of 2:1 . However, there are exceptions to this. One common example would be deoxyribose, a component of DNA, which has the empirical...

s and derivatives. The systematic name of this enzyme class is UDP-N-acetyl-D-glucosamine 2-epimerase. Other names in common use include UDP-N-acetylglucosamine 2'-epimerase, uridine diphosphoacetylglucosamine 2'-epimerase, uridine diphospho-N-acetylglucosamine 2'-epimerase, and uridine diphosphate-N-acetylglucosamine-2'-epimerase. This enzyme participates in aminosugars metabolism.

In microorganisms this epimerase is involved in in the synthesis of the capsule precursor UDP-ManNAcA. Some of these enzymes are bifunctional. The UDP-N-acetylglucosamine 2-epimerase from rat

Rat

Rats are various medium-sized, long-tailed rodents of the superfamily Muroidea. "True rats" are members of the genus Rattus, the most important of which to humans are the black rat, Rattus rattus, and the brown rat, Rattus norvegicus...

 liver

Liver

The liver is a vital organ present in vertebrates and some other animals. It has a wide range of functions, including detoxification, protein synthesis, and production of biochemicals necessary for digestion...

 displays both epimerase and kinase

Kinase

In chemistry and biochemistry, a kinase is a type of enzyme that transfers phosphate groups from high-energy donor molecules, such as ATP, to specific substrates, a process referred to as phosphorylation. Kinases are part of the larger family of phosphotransferases...

 activity.

Structural studies

As of late 2007, 4 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 .