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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. Most enzymes are proteins, and most such processes are chemical reactions.
Catalysis may be classified as either homogeneous, whose components are dispersed in the same phase (usually gaseous or liquid) as the reactant, or heterogeneous, whose components are not in the same phase. Enzymes and other biocatalysts are often considered as a third category. Catalysis is ubiquitous in chemical industry of all kinds. [6]
Enzymes are used in the chemical industry and other industrial applications when extremely specific catalysts are required. Enzymes in general are limited in the number of reactions they have evolved to catalyze and also by their lack of stability in organic solvents and at high temperatures.
Chemoselectivity: Since the purpose of an enzyme is to act on a single type of functional group, other sensitive functionalities, which would normally react to a certain extent under chemical catalysis, survive. As a result, biocatalytic reactions tend to be "cleaner" and laborious purification of product(s) from impurities emerging through ...
Although general-acid catalysis for breakdown of the First and Second tetrahedral intermediate may occur by the path shown in the diagram, evidence supporting such a mechanism with chymotrypsin [25] has been controverted. [26] The second stage of catalysis is the resolution of the acyl-enzyme intermediate by the attack of a second substrate.
Enzyme catalysis of chemical reactions occur with high selectivity and rate. The substrate is activated in a small part of the enzyme 's macromolecule called the active site . There, the binding of a substrate close to functional groups in the enzyme causes catalysis by so-called proximity effects.
For example, an enzyme that catalyzed this reaction would be an oxidoreductase: A – + B → A + B – In this example, A is the reductant (electron donor) and B is the oxidant (electron acceptor). In biochemical reactions, the redox reactions are sometimes more difficult to see, such as this reaction from glycolysis:
Most enzymes have a rate around 10 5 s −1 M −1. The fastest enzymes in the dark box on the right (>10 8 s −1 M −1) are constrained by the diffusion limit. (Data adapted from reference [1]) A diffusion-limited enzyme catalyses a reaction so efficiently that the rate limiting step is that of substrate diffusion into the active site, or ...