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Facts about Enzymes

Enzymes

Enzymes are usually specific, or unique, to the reactions they catalyze and the substrates that are involved in these reactions.

Enzymes

By inhibiting the activity of these enzymes, aspirin suppresses our experience of pain and inflammation.

Enzymes

Enzymes can perform up to several million catalytic reactions per second.

Enzymes

Some enzymes do not need any additional components to exhibit full activity.

Enzymes

Most enzymes are proteins, though certain nucleic acids, called ribozymes, are also capable of catalytic activity.

Enzymes

Enzymes can be affected by molecules that increase their activity (activators) or decrease their activity (inhibitors).

Enzymes

Like all catalysts, enzymes work to lower the activation energy of a reaction, or the initial energy input necessary for most chemical reactions to occur.

Enzymes

Enzymes may speed up reactions by a factor of many millions.

Enzymes

Most enzymes are larger than the substrates on which they act.

Enzymes

Enzymes can pair two or more reactions, so that a spontaneous reaction can be used to drive an unfavorable one.

Enzymes

Enzymes that reach this kcat/Km value are called catalytically perfect or kinetically perfect.

Enzymes

Many drugs can be administered in a variety of ways rather than just one.

Enzymes

kcat/Km is a useful quantity for comparing the relative efficiencies of different enzymes, or the same enzyme interacting with different substrates, because it takes both affinity and catalytic ability into consideration.

Enzymes

Cofactors can be either inorganic (e.g., metal ions and iron-sulfur clusters) or organic compounds, which are also known as coenzymes.

Enzymes

Enzymes are known for their specificity; that is, they often interact with only one substrate to catalyze a particular reaction.

Enzymes

Not all enzymes have been named in this manner, so a more formal method of nomenclature has been developed to classify enzymes.

Enzymes

Enzymes (and other proteins) are composed of amino acid chains called polypeptide chains.

Enzymes

The International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology has developed a nomenclature for enzymes, called EC numbers.

Enzymes

A reaction catalyzed by enzymes must be spontaneous; that is, having a natural tendency to occur without needing an external push.

Enzymes

Enzymes are essential to sustain life because most chemical reactions in biological cells, such as the digestion of food, would occur too slowly or would lead to different products without the activity of enzymes.

Enzymes

Aspirin works by inhibiting COX-1 and COX-2, the enzymes that produce prostaglandin, a hormonal messenger that signals inflammation.

Enzymes

Allosteric inhibitors are often used to regulate metabolic pathways, in which several enzymes work together in a specific order.

Enzymes

To account for the specificity of enzymes, Emil Fischer proposed that the enzyme had a particular shape into which the substrate(s) fit exactly.

Enzymes

Allosteric molecules can also activate or increase the activity of enzymes by changing the shape of the enzyme's active site in order to facilitate interaction with a substrate.

Enzymes are proteins that control the speed of chemical reactions in your body. Without enzymes, these reactions would take place too slowly to keep you alive. Some enzymes, like the ones in your gut, break down large molecules into smaller ones.

Enzymes are organic catalysts which aid in facilitating chemical reactions in the body. Enzymes are needed for metabolic pathways in the body, respiration, digestion and other important life processes. When enzymes function properly, homeostasis is maintained.

The interaction between and enzyme and its substrate change a chemical reaction by bringing substrates close together so that they can react, and slightly weaken the bonds with substrates by changing the shapes of a molecule. Suppose that the amino acids that make up an enzymes active site are changed.

Now, when we have fever the body temperature is raised. ... The enzymes activity will be changed or affected because they cannot function well at higher temperatures, as the reason why people die of high fevers because the enzymes will be denatured and their body functions are not able to stay normal.

A fundamental task of proteins is to act as enzymes—catalysts that increase the rate of virtually all the chemical reactions within cells. Although RNAs are capable of catalyzing some reactions, most biological reactions are catalyzed by proteins.