Ribbon diagram (rainbow colored, N-terminus = blue, C-terminus =
red) of the dimeric structure of bacterial alkaline phosphatase.
|PDB structures||RCSB PDB PDBe PDBsum| |Gene Ontology||AmiGO /
EGO| Structure of alkaline phosphatase. Alkaline phosphatase
(ALP, ALKP) (EC 220.127.116.11) is a hydrolase enzyme
responsible for removing phosphate groups from many types of
molecules, including nucleotides, proteins, and alkaloids. The
process of removing the phosphate group is called
dephosphorylation. As the name suggests, alkaline phosphatases
are most effective in an alkaline environment. It is sometimes
used synonymously as basic phosphatase. In Gram-negative
bacteria, alkaline phosphatase is located in the periplasmic
space, external to the cell membrane. Since this space is much
more subject to environmental variation than the actual interior
of the cell, bacterial alkaline phosphatase is comparatively
resistant to inactivation, denaturation, and degradation, and
also has a higher rate of activity. Although th