Peptides are biologically occurring oligomers of amino acids linked by amide bonds and are indispensable for all living organisms. Many bioactive peptides are used as antibiotics, antivirus agents, insecticides, pheromones, and food preservatives. Nature employs several different strategies to form amide bonds. ATP-grasp enzymes that catalyze amide bond formation (ATP-dependent carboxylate-amine ligases) utilize a strategy of activating carboxylic acid as an acylphosphate intermediate to form amide bonds and are involved in many different biological processes in both primary and secondary metabolisms. The recent discovery of several new ATP-dependent carboxylate-amine ligases has expanded the diversity of this group of enzymes and showed their usefulness for generating oligopeptides. In this review, an overview of findings on amide bond formation catalyzed by ATP-grasp enzymes in the past decade is presented.
Keywords: ATP-grasp; amide bond formation; biosynthesis; ligases; peptides.
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