Structure of Enzymes
- Enzymes are biological catalysts
- ‘Biological’ because they function in living systems
- ‘Catalysts’ because they speed up the rate of chemical reactions without being used up or changed themselves
- Enzymes have an active site to which specific substrates bind
- Enzymes are also globular proteins
- Critical to the enzyme's function is the active site where the substrate binds
- Enzymes are specific to the substrate
- The shapes of the enzyme and substrate and their chemical properties are complementary, to allow the substrate to fit into the active site, like two jigsaw pieces fitting together
- This is called enzyme-substrate specificity
- Due to this specificity, thousands of enzymes are needed throughout an organism, to carry out individual chemical reactions