The process of transferring lipoic acid to proteins is a two-step process. The first step is the activation of lipoic acid by lipoate-activating enzyme to form lipoyl-AMP. For the second step, the protein encoded by this gene transfers the lipoyl moiety to apoproteins. Alternative splicing results in multiple transcript variants. A related pseudogene has been identified on chromosome 13. Read-through transcription also exists between this gene and the neighboring downstream mitochondrial ribosomal protein L30 (MRPL30) gene.