Nitrilase

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nitrilase 1
Identifiers
Symbol NIT1
HUGO 7828
Entrez 4817
OMIM 604618
RefSeq NM_005600
UniProt Q86X76
Other data
Locus Chr. 1 pter-qter

Nitrilases are enzymes [EC 3.5.5.1] which catalyse the hydrolysis of nitriles to carboxylic acids and ammonia, without the formation of "free" amide intermediates. Nitrilases are involved in natural product biosynthesis and post translational modifications in plants, animals, fungi and certain prokaryotes. Nitrilases can also be used as catalysts in preparative organic chemistry. Among others, nitrilases have been used for the resolution of racemic mixtures. Nitrile hydratases are another class of enzyme [EC 4.2.1.84] which hydrolyse nitriles to amides. Nitrile hydratases are almost invariably co-expressed with an amidase, which converts the amide to the carboxylic acid, consequently it can sometimes be difficult to distinguish nitrilase activity from nitrile hydratase plus amidase activity.