Enzymes are biological catalysts that drive chemical reactions crucial to sustaining life. They work on substrates in three ways: substrate orientation, physical stress, and changes in substrate reactivity. Enzymes have active sites where they contact particular substrates and are never wasted. Enzyme deficiencies can cause diseases such as PKU and Tay-Sachs. Inhibiting enzyme function has led to life-saving drugs such as penicillin.
In biology, one of the factors that defines a living being from an inanimate object is the organism’s ability to carry out chemical reactions crucial to its survival. Even single-celled organisms are capable of hundreds of chemical reactions within their cell walls. Imagine the infinite amount of reactions that a large organism such as a human being carries out. None of these reactions are possible without enzymes.
Enzymes are biological catalysts or assistants. Enzymes are made up of various types of proteins that work to drive the chemical reaction needed for a specific action or nutrient. Enzymes can start a reaction or speed it up. The chemicals that are transformed with the help of enzymes are called substrates. In the absence of enzymes, these chemicals are called reagents.
To illustrate the speed and efficiency of enzymes, substrates can be transformed into usable products at the rate of ten times per second. Considering there are approximately 75,000 different enzymes in the human body, these chemical reactions are carried out at an astonishing rate. On the other hand, in the absence of enzymes, the reactants can take hundreds of years to convert into a usable product, if they are capable of doing so. This is why enzymes are vital in sustaining life on earth.
Generally, enzymes work on substrates in one of three ways: substrate orientation, physical stress, and changes in substrate reactivity. Substrate orientation occurs when an enzyme causes substrate molecules to align with each other and form a bond. When an enzyme uses physical stress on a substrate, it actually grips the substrate and forces the molecule to break apart. An enzyme that causes changes in the reactivity of the substrate alters the electron placement of the molecule, which affects the molecule’s ability to bind with other molecules.
Enzymes have active sites where they contact particular substrates. The catalytic properties of enzymes are a cyclical process. Once a substrate has come into contact with the active site of an enzyme, it is modified by the enzyme to form the final product. Once the process is complete, the enzyme releases the product and is ready to start the process with new substrates. Enzymes are never wasted and are always recycled.
The absence of enzymes is responsible for many diseases. In humans, a tragic disease called phenylketonuria (PKU), which causes severe mental retardation and even death in newborns, is the result of the absence of one type of enzyme. Tay-Sachs disease is just as tragic a result as an enzyme deficiency. It causes retardation, paralysis, and often death in infancy if left untreated.
Our ability to alter enzymes by inhibiting their ability to function has led to hundreds of life-saving drugs. An example is penicillin, a well-known antibiotic that can cure syphilis, pneumonia and other diseases. Penicillin works by binding to the active sites of enzymes in disease-causing bacteria, ultimately destroying the bacteria’s ability to survive and reproduce.
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