Enzymes as Biological Catalysts
Living cells perform thousands of chemical reactions that would naturally occur too slowly for life to function. While increasing temperature could speed these up, this approach requires lots of energy and might damage cells by accelerating unwanted reactions too.
Enter enzymes - large proteins that act as biological catalysts. Unlike ordinary catalysts, enzymes are incredibly specific about which reactions they accelerate. They're made of long chains of amino acids folded into precise three-dimensional shapes.
Each enzyme contains an active site with a unique shape that's complementary to its substrate (the molecule it acts upon). This specificity is crucial - if a substrate doesn't fit the active site, the enzyme won't catalyse the reaction. Scientists initially described this using the "lock and key model," but now favour the more accurate induced fit model, which recognises that enzymes slightly change shape when binding to substrates.
Did you know? Enzymes aren't consumed or changed during reactions they catalyse, which means a single enzyme molecule can process millions of substrate molecules per second!