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Enzyme catalysis is the increase in the rate of a process by an "enzyme", a biological molecule. Most enzymes are proteins, and most such processes are chemical reactions. Within the enzyme, generally catalysis occurs at a localized site, called the active site.
The reaction catalysed by an enzyme uses exactly the same reactants and produces exactly the same products as the uncatalysed reaction. Like other catalysts, enzymes do not alter the position of equilibrium between substrates and products. [1] However, unlike uncatalysed chemical reactions, enzyme-catalysed reactions display saturation kinetics.
Almost all metabolic processes in the cell need enzyme catalysis in order to occur at rates fast enough to sustain life. The study of how fast an enzyme can transform a substrate into a product is called enzyme kinetics. The rate of reaction of many chemical reactions shows a linear response as function of the concentration of substrate molecules.
Biochemical reactions involving a single substrate are often assumed to follow Michaelis–Menten kinetics, without regard to the model's underlying assumptions. Only a small proportion of enzyme-catalysed reactions have just one substrate, but the equation still often applies if only one substrate concentration is varied.
Enzyme denaturation is normally linked to temperatures above a species' normal level; as a result, enzymes from bacteria living in volcanic environments such as hot springs are prized by industrial users for their ability to function at high temperatures, allowing enzyme-catalysed reactions to be operated at a very high rate.
Linear pathways follow a step-by-step sequence, where each enzymatic reaction results in the transformation of a substrate into an intermediate product. This intermediate is processed by subsequent enzymes until the final product is synthesized. A linear chain of four enzyme-catalyzed steps. A linear pathway can be studied in various ways.
The reaction catalyzed by carbonic anhydrase is HCO − 3 + H + ⇌ CO 2 + H 2 O. Carbonic acid has a pK a of around 6.36 (the exact value depends on the medium), so at pH 7 a small percentage of the bicarbonate is protonated. Carbonic anhydrase is one of the fastest enzymes, and its rate is typically limited by the diffusion rate of its ...
Kinetically perfect enzymes have a specificity constant, k cat /K m, on the order of 10 8 to 10 9 M −1 s −1.The rate of the enzyme-catalysed reaction is limited by diffusion and so the enzyme 'processes' the substrate well before it encounters another molecule.