Professor Tom O'Dell defines phosphorylation - the addition of a phosphate group to a protein molecule to regulate gene function.

Protein phosphorylation or phosphorylation, in the technical sense, is the attachment of a phosphate group onto a protein. It is done by a particular class of enzymes called protein kinases that use ATP as a substrate and attach a phosphate group onto a protein – and that protein is phosphorylated. The key to protein phosphorylation is that it modifies the activity of that protein. So proteins in the cell that are involved in detecting chemical signals, or proteins that are involved in structural organization and integrity of the cell, proteins that are involved in allowing ions to move back and forth across the membrane – all of those proteins, even proteins that regulate the expression of genes, are regulated by phosphorylation. When they are phosphorylated, their activity changes and codes a signal that a cell can use in many, many different ways.

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