Involved in the post-translational conjugation of arginine to the N-terminal aspartate or glutamate of a protein. This arginylation is required for degradation of the protein via the ubiquitin pathway. Does not arginylate cysteine residues (By similarity).
We showed that the molecular chaperone BiP (also known as GRP78) was short-lived under basal conditions and ER stress. The turnover of BiP was in part driven by its amino-terminal arginylation (Nt-arginylation) by the arginyltransferase ATE1, which generated an autophagic N-degron of the N-end rule pathway.