Article: Findings from RIKEN advance knowledge in enzyme research.

According to a study from Sayo, Japan, "D-Alanine-D-alanine ligase (Ddl) is one of the key enzymes in peptidoglycan biosynthesis and is an important target for drug discovery. The enzyme catalyzes the condensation of two d-Ala molecules using ATP to produce D-Ala-D-Ala, which is the terminal peptide of a peptidoglycan monomer."

"The structures of five forms of the enzyme from Thermus thermophilus HB8 (TtDdl) were determined: unliganded TtDdl (2.3 angstrom resolution), TtDdl-adenylyl imidodiphosphate (2.6 angstrom), TtDdl-ADP (2.2 angstrom), TtDdl-ADP-D-Ala (1.9 angstrom) and TtDdl-ATP-D-Ala-D-Ala (2.3 angstrom). The central domain rotates as a rigid body towards ...

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