Amidohydrolases (or amidases) are a type of

hydrolase In biochemistry, hydrolases constitute a class of enzymes that commonly function as biochemical catalysts that use water to break a chemical bond: :\ce \quad \xrightarrowtext\quad \ce This typically results in dividing a larger molecule into s ...

that acts upon

amide In organic chemistry, an amide, also known as an organic amide or a carboxamide, is a chemical compound, compound with the general formula , where R, R', and R″ represent any group, typically organyl functional group, groups or hydrogen at ...

bonds. They are categorized under EC number EC 3.5.1 and 3.5.2. Examples include: *

Beta-lactamase Beta-lactamases (β-lactamases) are enzymes () produced by bacteria that provide multi-resistance to beta-lactam antibiotics such as penicillins, cephalosporins, cephamycins, monobactams and carbapenems ( ertapenem), although carbapene ...

Histone deacetylase Histone deacetylases (, HDAC) are a class of enzymes that remove acetyl groups (O=C-CH3) from an ε-N-acetyl lysine amino acid on both histone and non-histone proteins. HDACs allow histones to wrap the DNA more tightly. This is important becaus ...

Urease Ureases (), functionally, belong to the superfamily of amidohydrolases and phosphotriesterases. Ureases are found in numerous Bacteria, Archaea, fungi, algae, plants, and some invertebrates. Ureases are nickel-containing metalloenzymes of high ...

The amidohydrolase superfamily is a large

protein family A protein family is a group of evolutionarily related proteins. In many cases, a protein family has a corresponding gene family, in which each gene encodes a corresponding protein with a 1:1 relationship. The term "protein family" should not be ...

of more than 20,000 members with diverse chemistry and physiologic roles. Due to its complexity and size, the amidohydrolase superfamily is being used by the

Enzyme Function Initiative The Enzyme Function Initiative (EFI) is a large-scale collaborative project aiming to develop and disseminate a robust strategy to determine enzyme function through an integrated sequence–structure-based approach. The project was funded in May ...

(EFI) for developing a large-scale strategy for functional assignment of unknown proteins.

See also