The
N-terminus (also known as the
amino-terminus,
NH2-terminus,
N-terminal end or
amine-terminus) refers to the start of a
protein or
polypeptide terminated by an
amino acid with a free
amine group (-NH
2). By convention, peptide sequences are written N-terminus to
C-terminus, left to right in
LTR languages. This correlates the
translation direction to the text direction (because when a protein is translated from messenger RNA, it is created from N-terminus to C-terminus - amino acids are added to the carbonyl end).