BIOMOLECULES AND ENZYMES

Detailed explanation-1: -Enzymes are proteins made up of amino acids that helps in lowering the activation energy of the reaction. Only few proteins have the capability to bind the substrate with the help of their active sites in such a manner that allows the reaction to take place in an efficient manner.

Detailed explanation-2: -Definition. An enzyme is a biological catalyst and is almost always a protein. It speeds up the rate of a specific chemical reaction in the cell.

Detailed explanation-3: -Enzymes are proteins comprised of amino acids linked together in one or more polypeptide chains. This sequence of amino acids in a polypeptide chain is called the primary structure. This, in turn, determines the three-dimensional structure of the enzyme, including the shape of the active site.

Detailed explanation-4: -Although an enzyme generally consists of protein, a few enzymes contain non-protein components such as nucleic acid. The ribozyme discovered by Thomas Cech and others in 1986 is a catalyst made of RNA, which acts on itself and cleaves RNA.

Detailed explanation-5: -The conclusion that pure proteins can be enzymes was definitively demonstrated by John Howard Northrop and Wendell Meredith Stanley, who worked on the digestive enzymes pepsin (1930), trypsin and chymotrypsin. These three scientists were awarded the 1946 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.