Enzymes

• Organisms carry out a range of different chemical reactions to maintain their survival, which are done in different departments of the cell and different organelles, known as metabolic reactions.
• Metabolic reactions are important for survival, for example, in the plant's chloroplast, there's a whole range of different steps and reactions happening for the process of photosynthesis.
• In the mitochondria of both animals, plants, and other cells, we're carrying out the process of respiration.
• The word metabolism is defined to refer to all of the reactions which happen in the body, not just digestion, but also respiration, how we see things, how we think, breathing in the lungs, and all of the reactions that happen.
• Reactions can be sped up by factors such as increasing the temperature.
• High temperatures can melt lipids and denature proteins, damaging cells and preventing them from functioning properly.
• A catalyst in science is defined as a chemical which speeds up the rate of a reaction but remains unchanged and reusable at the end of the reaction.
• Biological catalysts in our cells that we use are proteins known as enzymes.
• The addition of an enzyme lowers the activation energy required for a reaction to start, making it more likely for successful reactions to occur per unit of time.
• The pink line on the graph represents the progress without an enzyme, where the activation energy is quite high and fewer molecules have the right amount of energy to collide and form products.
• Enzymes only catalyze the reaction if the substrate binds to the specific active site it's designed to go to.
• The active site of the enzyme can have various chemical groups such as hydroxide groups, hydrogen groups, positive ions, negative ions, and electron donating molecules, all interacting with the substrate in the right way to do the right reaction.
• The active site of the enzyme contains reactive molecules that can carry out all of these little steps in a controlled way and in the correct way, with a lower activation energy than normal.
• The active site holds the substrate in a specific orientation that facilitates the reaction.
• Enzymes are catalysts that lower the activation energy required for a reaction to start, making it easier for more molecules to collide and form products.
• The active site can donate necessary positive ions or hydrogen to the substrate if needed.
• The active site can physically squeeze the substrate in certain angles to further lower the activation energy.
• Enzymes are important molecules for carrying out all of our reactions and any living organism has to carry out a range of metabolic reactions in order to stay alive.
• Metabolism is defined as all of the chemical reactions that happen in the body, which can refer to many things like respiration, digestion, photosynthesis, and more.
• An enzyme has one specific job and it will only do that reaction on a particular substrate.
• Only the right-shaped substrates will fit into their correct active sites.
• The shape of the active site isn't always going to stay the same and it can be changed by certain factors such as ph, temperature, and the presence of inhibitors or cofactors.
• Inhibitors stop enzymes from working, whereas cofactors can bind to active sites and improve their function.
• The higher the enzyme's turnover, the more substrates it can combine in a minute.
• The number of substrates an enzyme can catalyze in one minute is called the enzyme's turnover.
• The enzyme is a protein made up of lots of amino acids, and the proteins have specific 3d shapes which are coded for in our DNA.
• Enzymes are reusable, and the more they can catalyze in a minute, the higher their turnover rate.
• Substrates bind to enzymes at a specific part called the active site.
• An enzyme is a large protein that catalyzes a reaction, and the reaction catalyzed by the enzyme is called a substrate.
• The active site is the reactive part of the enzyme where the substrates go.
• The ability of an enzyme to do this reaction is affected by its 3d shape and the 3d shape of the active site.
• Enzymes are depicted as large proteins which are folded into a correct shape and they take our reactants and turn them into products because on their own these things won't happen fast enough.
• Every molecule has different amounts of kinetic energy.
• Lowering the activation energy is the same as increasing the temperature because more molecules have enough energy to get over the barrier.
• More molecules will have enough energy to react if the kinetic energy of the molecules is increased.
• The change in energy that happens in a reaction can be represented on a graph as the progress of the reaction on the x-axis and the energy of the reactants and products on the y-axis.
• A chemical reaction can take place if the correct molecules collide together and have enough energy.
• The energy required to start a reaction, not to finish but to begin the reaction, is known as activation energy.
• The energy of the reactants is at a certain level but they need to increase their energy to get over an activation energy barrier.
• Some reactions have a low activation energy and a tiny amount of energy to go over that hill and begin the reaction because at the start there will be more molecules that have enough of this energy to react.