Dehydrogenase

Dehydrogenase, which is also known as “DHO” in scientific literature, is basically an enzyme that promotes oxidization in a substrate. This substance oxidises the substrate through a distinct reduction reaction that will transfer one or more hydrides of the substrate to an electron receptor, typically nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) or nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADP+). The substrate oxidization can also occur in a flavin coenzyme such as flavin adenine dinucleotide (FAD) and flavin mononucleotide.

There are many different kinds of dehydrogenase, including glutamate dehydrogenase, which is an enzyme that can convert glutamate to an α-ketoglutarate and vice versa; pyruvate dehydrogenase, an enzyme that serves an important purose in the tricarboxylic acid cycle by converting pyruvate to acetyl coenzyme A; glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase, which is involved in the pentose phosphate pathway; and glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase, which plays an important role in glycolysis.

The tricarboxylic acid cycle (or TCA cycle)—the series of chemical reactions used by aerobic organisms to generate energy from carbohydrates, fats, and proteins—also uses dehydrogenase for oxidization. The TCA cycle uses isocitrate dehydrogenase (also known as IDH, which catalyzes the third step of the process), oxoglutarate dehydrogenase complex (or α-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase complex), succinate dehydrogenase (or succinate-coenzyme Q reductase, which is found in the inner mitochondrial membrane of many bacterian cells and mammalian mitochondria), and malate dehydrogenase (also known as MDH, which is an enzyme that reverse catalyzes the oxidationof the substance malate to oxaloacetate—a reaction that is part of many metabolic pathways other than the citric acid cycle).

Other types of dehydrogenase include aldehyde dehydrogenase, acetaldehyde dehydrogenase, alcohol dehydrogenase, lactate dehydrogenase, sorbitol dehydrogenase, I-iditol dehydrogenase (ID), isocitrate dehydrogenase (ICD), and polyol dehydrogenase.

This category contains scientific information on dehydrogenase, an enzyme that catalyzes the removal and eventual transfer of hydrogen molecules from a substrate in an oxidation and reduction reaction.