Enzymes

Enzymes
Biological catalysts
• Catalysts are substances that speed up many
chemical reactions. A catalyst alters the rate of a
chemical reaction, without being changed itself.
• Many chemical reactions are taking place all the
time in living organisms. These reactions are
called metabolic reactions.
• Almost every metabolic reaction is controlled by
catalysts called enzymes. Without enzymes, the
reactions would take place very slowly or not at
all.
Enzymes
• Enzymes are biological catalysts that bring about
reactions in the body of living organisms.
• Eg: inside the intestines, large molecules are broken
down to smaller ones in the process of digestion,
catalyzed by enzymes.
• A different enzyme is needed for each kind of
nutrient. For example, starch is digested to a sugar
called maltose by an enzyme called amylase.
Proteins are digested to amino acids by protease.
• The substance that an enzyme changes is called its
substrate.
Enzymes catalyse metabolic reactions
Enzymes in plants
• Enzymes are also found in plants, eg: in germinating seeds
they digest the food stored as starch, for the growing
seedling.
• As the seed soaks up water, the enzyme amylase becomes
active. Amylase catalyses the reaction in which starch
breaks down to maltose.
• Starch is insoluble, but maltose is soluble and can easily be
transported to the embryo in the seed, that uses it to
provide energy during (respiration) for growth.
• Maltose can be broken down to provide glucose molecules
that can be linked together to make cellulose molecules
that makes the cell walls of the new cells produced as the
embryo grows
Other enzymes
• Many enzymes help to make large molecules
from small ones. For example, enzymes help
to link amino acids together to make proteins
inside cells.
• Many industries now use enzymes, and the
production of enzymes on a large scale is
becoming a very profitable major industry, eg:
tanning industry and washing powders
Naming enzymes
• Enzymes are named according to the reaction that they
catalyse.
• Their names often end in -ase. Eg: enzymes that catalyse
the breakdown of carbohydrates are called carbohydrases.
• If they break down proteins, they are proteases.
• If they break down fats and oils (lipids) they are lipases.
• Sometimes, enzymes are given more specific names than
this. For example, we have seen that the carbohydrase
that breaks down starch is called amylase. A carbohydrase
that breaks down maltose is called maltase. A
carbohydrase that breaks down sucrose is called sucrase.
• If a word ends with ‘zyme’, it is almost certainly an
enzyme.
Milk lactose
• Mammals have babies that survive on milk for their early
months. Milk is an excellent food – it contains
carbohydrates, fats, proteins, minerals and vitamins.
• The enzyme lactase, breaks down a sugar called lactose
into smaller molecules, which can be absorbed into the
blood.
• They can drink milk and eat dairy products (foods made
from milk), with no problems.
Lactose intolerance
• Eating the foods containing milk makes them feel ill.
They are intolerant to lactose, because they do not
make lactase.
• The lactose is not broken down in their digestive system.
It stays inside the alimentary canal. This makes water
move into the canal by osmosis.
• All this extra water in the alimentary canal can give a
person diarrhoea.
• The lactose provides food for the bacteria that live in the
alimentary canal, that feed on the lactose and produce
gases as a waste product, which can give these people
abdominal pain, and cause flatulence.
Treatment
• The simplest solution is not to eat foods
containing lactose.
• Another approach is to take pills that contain
the enzyme lactase.
• If a lactose-intolerant person swallows one of
these pills before eating dairy products, they
may avoid these unpleasant symptoms.
How enzymes work-Lock and Key hypothesis
• Each type of enzyme is a protein molecules with a very
specific shape. The enzyme molecule has a ‘dent’ in it,
called the active site
• An enzyme works by allowing a molecule of its substrate
to fit into the active site, where the substrate and the
enzyme bind together, for a very short time, forming
enzyme-substrate complex. For this to happen, the fit
has to be perfect.
• We say that the shape of the enzyme and the shape of
the substrate are complementary to one another.
• When the substrate is in the active site, the enzyme
makes the substrate change into a new substance called
the product.
Lock and key hypothesis-where enzyme is the
lock and substrate is the key
• Then the product breaks away from the enzyme as the
product no longer fits into the active sites.
• Now the enzyme is free, and ready to bind with another
substrate molecule.
• One substrate can also be broken into two product
molecules, or an enzymes can catalyse reactions where
two substrate molecules bind with its active site and are
joined together to form a single product molecule.
• A single enzyme molecule may catalysed millions of
reactions, eg: catalase is the fastest enzyme known,
breaking down almost 44 million hydrogen peroxide
molecules in one second.
Factors that affect enzymes
• But there are some factors that can affect this

speed of action.
• Enzymes are very sensitive to temperature and
pH.
• Each kind of enzyme has a particular temperature
and pH at which it works fastest. These are called
the optimum temperature, and the optimum pH,
for that enzyme.
Effect of temperature on the rate of
enzyme catlysed reaction
Denaturation
• Enzymes from the human body generally have an
optimum temperature of about 37 °C (40 oC).
• Enzymes from plants may have optimum temperatures
much higher than this.
• Some bacteria, especially those that live in hot springs,
may have really high optimum temperatures – up to 80
°C in some cases.
• For many enzymes, a temperature above about 60 °C
completely stops them working.
• This is because the high temperature damages the
enzyme. The enzyme is said to be denatured. It cannot
catalyse its reaction anymore.
Reason for increased activity
• At 0 °C, the enzyme has no activity. At this temperature,
molecules have very little kinetic energy – they are
moving only slowly (Brownian movement).
• As they are moving only slowly, the substrate molecules
rarely collide (effective collisions) with the enzyme. So,
they rarely enter its active site, and very few substrate
molecules are converted to product.
• As the temperature increases, the kinetic energy of the
enzyme and substrate molecules increases. They move
faster and collide with each other more frequently and
with more energy. Effective collisions are more frequent.
Each second, more substrate molecules collide with an
active site and are converted to product.
Reason for denaturation
• The graph shows enzyme activity increasing as temperature
increases.
• However, as temperature increases above the optimum, the
kinetic energy of the enzyme begins to shake it apart.
• Its molecules begin to lose their shape, so that the active site
is no longer a true complementary shape to the substrate, so
the substrate no longer fits into the active site.
• It cannot form an enzyme–substrate complex and is not
converted to product. The rate starts to decrease.
• The activity of the enzyme therefore decreases. When the
temperature reaches 60 °C, the active site is so out of shape
that the enzyme has completely stopped working. It is
completely denatured.
Denaturation due to pH change
• Enzymes also have an optimum pH. For most enzymes,
this is around pH 7.
• However, there are some enzymes that work best in a
much higher or lower pH than this. For example, an
enzyme (pepsin) works best in the acidic conditions in
the human stomach – at a pH of about 2. In the
intestines the ph is 8 or more and the intestinal enzymes
work best at that pH
• When an enzyme is placed in a liquid with a pH that is
not its optimum pH, it is damaged.
• The enzyme is denatured and cannot catalyse its
reaction.
Effect of pH on the rate of enzyme catlysed
reaction
Reason for denaturation due to pH change
• Each enzyme molecule has a very specific

shape, with the active site being the best fit
for the substrate at its optimum pH.
• A pH well above or below this value causes
the enzyme molecule to lose its shape
(denature), so it can no longer bind with the
substrate.
• (At low pH there are more H+ ions which
damage the protein structure).

Enzymes

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Enzymes

• But there are some factors that can affect this

• Each enzyme molecule has a very specific

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