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Home >> Animal Biotechnology >> Enzyme Technology >> Enzyme Technology Introduction

The Nature of Enzymes

Enzymes are catalysts which increase the rate of otherwise slow or imperceptible reactions without undergoing any net change in their structure. These enzymes are proteins and mediate all synthetic and degradative reactions carried out by living organisms.
They are very efficient catalysts, often far superior to conventional chemical catalysts, for which reason they are being employed increasingly in today's high technological society, as a highly significant part of biotechnological expansion.

Enzymes have a number of distinct advantages over conventional chemical catalysts. Foremost among these are their specificity and selectivity not only for particular reactions but also in their discrimination between similar parts of molecules (regiospecificity) or optical isomers (stereospecificity).

They catalyse only the reactions of very narrow ranges of reactants (substrates), which may consist of small number of closely related classes of compounds (e.g. trypsin catalyses the hydrolysis of some peptides and esters in addition to most proteins), a single class of compounds (e.g. hexokinase catalyses the transfer of a phosphate group from ATP to several hexoses), or a single compound (e.g. glucose oxidase oxidizes only glucose amongst the naturally occurring sugars).

Enzymes are complex protein molecules present in living cells, where they act as catalysts in bringing about chemical changes in substances. These are biological catalysts used by living cells to achieve a variety of chemical conversions recognized as the "chemistry of life".

Every cell contains a large number of enzymes, each with an ability limited to the conversion of a particular chemical molecule or portion of molecule to a modified or cleaved version of that molecule.

More than 3000 enzymes catalysing a wide array of reactions are known to exist. The disintegration of foodstuff to amino acids, sugars, lipids is normally accomplished within 3 to 6 hours, depending on the amount and type of food.

In the absence of enzymes, hydrolysis by digestive enzymes would take more than 30 years. With the development in the science of biochemistry, a fuller understanding of the wide range of enzymes present in living cells and of their mode of action has come to light.

Without enzymes there can be no life. although enzymes are formed only in living cells, many can be separated from the cells and can continue to function in vitro. This unique ability of enzymes to perform their specific chemical transformations in isolation has led to an ever-increasing use of enzymes in industrial process, collectively termed enzyme technology.

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