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In biochemistry, a ligase is an enzyme that can catalyze the joining of two large molecules by forming a new chemical bond, usually with accompanying hydrolysis of a small pendant chemical group on one of the larger molecules or the enzyme catalyzing the linking together of two compounds, e.g., enzymes that catalyze joining of C-O, C-S, C-N, etc.
DNA ligase reconnects DNA strands when they are broken. It uses a cofactor molecule (shown in red) for power and a special lysine amino acid (shown in magenta) to perform the reaction. Our DNA ligases and the DNA ligase from the bacteriophage T7 (shown at the top from PDB entry 1a0i ) use ATP as the cofactor. Many bacteria, on the other hand, use NAD in the reaction, as with the DNA ligase shown at the bottom (from PDB entry 1dgs ). In both cases, a lysine in the DNA ligase forms a bond to the phosphate in the cofactor, holding onto the AMP portion and discarding the rest. Later in the reaction, this AMP is transferred to the broken DNA strand, and then is released when the strand is rejoined.