The pH Conditions that Effect Enzymes
Abstract
Enzymes are proteins that help speed up chemical reactions. Weather the enzyme is present or not, the reaction is still going to occur. Each enzyme has optimal conditions that it works best in. If any of these conditions such as pH, temperature, or concentration are off, they cause the enzyme to denature. If this occurs it cannot convert reactions to products as quickly. Data has been collected to support the idea that the specific enzyme used works best in a neutral environment than in more extremely higher or lower concentrations.
Introduction
Enzymes are present in all living things. Living organisms produce enzymes to speed up their chemical reactions to sustain life. The activity of these enzymes can be either fast, slow, or stopped according to the factor influencing them. In an enzyme, known as catalyzed reaction, the substance to act upon is better known as the substrate. The substrate bins onto an enzyme which is better known as the lock and key mechanism.
Enzymes have active sites, in which a specific substrate can only bind to. When the substrate binds to the active site, the enzyme slightly modifies its shape to maintain a firm grip onto the substrate. This temporarily allows reduction in the activation energy which is required to activate the reaction. Each reactant has an energy barrier that it has to overcome. When this occurs, the existing bonds break and new ones can then be formed. This reduction in activation energy allows the reaction to occur at a much quicker rate.
Enzymes are never changed nor consumed in a chemical reaction. (Dehay, G. 2009) Therefore they are recycled to breakdown additional substrate molecules. With enzymes being proteins they have a very organized structure which indicates its specialty of a specific substrate. The primary structure of an enzyme is its amino acid arrangement, therefore bonds are formed between amino acids and their side chains which...