AP BIOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -Specificity is a property of the enzyme and describes how restrictive the enzyme is in its choice of substrate; a completely specific enzyme would have only one substrate.

Detailed explanation-2: -A substrate enters the active site of the enzyme. This forms the enzyme-substrate complex. The reaction then occurs, converting the substrate into products and forming an enzyme products complex.

Detailed explanation-3: -The active site of an enzyme has a specific shape to fit a specific substrate (when the substrate binds an enzyme-substrate complex is formed) The specificity of an enzyme is a result of the complementary nature between the shape of the active site on the enzyme and its substrate(s)

Detailed explanation-4: -Specificity is attained when a chemical reactant (the substrate) interacts weakly with an enzyme’s active site to form a bond. The production and dissolution of covalent bonds is the only sort of chemical reaction that an enzyme can catalyse.

Detailed explanation-5: -However, not all enzymes act only on a single substrate – substrate specificity is quite variable. Enzymes have usually evolved to catalyze one reaction, or a particular class of reaction, and the level of specificity will depend on the function of the particular enzyme.