Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Biological specificity is the tendency of a characteristic such as a behavior or a biochemical variation to occur in a particular species. Biochemist Linus Pauling stated that "Biological specificity is the set of characteristics of living organisms or constituents of living organisms of being special or doing something special.
Glucose binds to hexokinase in the active site at the beginning of glycolysis. In biochemistry and molecular biology, a binding site is a region on a macromolecule such as a protein that binds to another molecule with specificity. [1]
Molecular binding occurs in biological complexes (e.g., between pairs or sets of proteins, or between a protein and a small molecule ligand it binds) and also in abiologic chemical systems, e.g. as in cases of coordination polymers and coordination networks such as metal-organic frameworks.
Chemical specificity is the ability of binding site of a macromolecule (such as a protein) to bind specific ligands. The fewer ligands a protein can bind, the greater its specificity. Specificity describes the strength of binding between a given protein and ligand.
The specificity of a receptor is determined by its spatial geometry and the way it binds to the ligand through non-covalent interactions, such as hydrogen bonding or Van der Waals forces. [ 2 ] If a receptor can be isolated a synthetic drug can be developed either to stimulate the receptor, an agonist or to block it, an antagonist .
Measurably irreversible covalent bonding between a ligand and target molecule is atypical in biological systems. In contrast to the definition of ligand in metalorganic and inorganic chemistry, in biochemistry it is ambiguous whether the ligand generally binds at a metal site, as is the case in hemoglobin. In general, the interpretation of ...
Specificity of signaling can be controlled if only some cells can respond to a particular hormone. Endocrine signaling involves the release of hormones by internal glands of an organism directly into the circulatory system, regulating distant target organs. In vertebrates, the hypothalamus is the neural control center for all endocrine systems.
In biology and biochemistry, the active site is the region of an enzyme where substrate molecules bind and undergo a chemical reaction. The active site consists of amino acid residues that form temporary bonds with the substrate, the binding site , and residues that catalyse a reaction of that substrate, the catalytic site .