Enzymes Case

1 Introduction

Enzymes are biological catalysts which are necessary for the chemical reactions inside the body. Catalyst is a chemical substance which capable to increase the rate of chemical reaction by provided alternative mechanism to lower down the minimum energy for the reaction to proceed. Catalyst will not have any chemical changes after the reaction. Enzymes are highly efficient catalysts which can increase the biochemical reaction rate by factor from 1016 to 1018. The reactant of enzyme in the reaction is known as substrate. The extent of an enzyme reacts with different substrate is known as specificity. Enzyme exhibits high specificity that an enzyme only reacts with narrow range of substrate. Without enzyme, the biochemical reaction inside the body will still happen, however the reaction rate is not sufficient for the survival of organism. The enormous catalytic power and specificity of enzymes are very important to ensure that thousand of biochemical reactions taking place at the same time can be proceed very rapidly and under well control.

2 Enzyme structure

Most enzymes consist of globular protein with tertiary structure. Some enzymes may contain RNA and are called ribozymes. Protein is made up of amino acids. Amino acid contains an amino group (NH2) and carboxyl group with and R functional group varies between different amino acid (Figure 1). Numerous amino acids connected together via peptide bond which shown in Figure 1 to form the primary structure of protein which is known as polypeptide chain. One or more polypeptide chain fold together to form three dimensional structure enzyme. The three dimensional structure of enzyme is determined by the amino acid sequence of the polypeptide chain which in turn determine the specificity of the enzyme. High temperature and pH change can denature the structure of enzyme and