Transferases carry out a wide variety of biochemical reactions in thousands of organisms which all involve the transfer of something. Many transferases are found in multiple different species. For example: transaldolase, from the Ribulose cycle, is found in every mammal and most other higher order species. Although it may have slight changes, such as insertions or deletions when compared to human transaldolase, it still has the same function and nearly identical structure. Some other examples of transferases include:

Transketolase
Adenosine Kinase
C-SRC
Tyrosine Kinase

CDK1
CDK2
HIV-1 Integrase
Methyl Transferase

Almost every transferase has the word "transferase" in the its name. Also all Kinases are transferases, since by definition a kinase moves a phosphate group from one molecule to another. Transferases play an important role in DNA replication, gene expression, energy production, and many other processes that keeps cells growing and dividing. For the purposes of this website three proteins from the above list have been chosen and elaborated on in the pages to come. These are: Adenosine Kinase (AK), Cyclin-Dependent Kinase 2 (CDK2), and HIV-1 Integrase. Each is a transferase and each is non-homologous to the others. If two amino acid sequences share greater than 20.0% identity, then the two sequence are considered homologous or to have started with a similar ancestor. Indentity for each protien compared to the others is shown below:

AK -- CDK2: 19.1% identity
AK -- HIV-1 Integrase: 11.3% identity
CDK2 -- HIV-1 Integrase: 13.7% identity

As seen by the identity scores above all three proteins are non-homologous to each other. In the pages to follow this site will dicuss the topology, active site, co-factors (if any), and other considerations needed for the protein to function properly in a biological system.