Hydrolase

A hydrolase is an enzyme which can break covalent bonds.

Like all enzymes, hydrolases are proteins which have an active site for the enzyme reaction and a target molecule recognition site which gives the reaction its specificity.

There are many types of hydrolases depending on the type of covalent bond which they hydrolyse. They all use one molecule of water in their reaction and generally carry the name of the substrate:

• the esterases (which cleave ester bonds), nucleases (which cleave nucleic acids);
• the proteases which cleave peptide bonds;
• the phosphatases which cleave bonds involving a phosphate group, etc.

They are therefore involved in a large number of physiological and cellular processes contributing both to digestion and regulating gene expression.