CHM 4139 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Reaction Rate, Ionic Strength, Promiscuity

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Chemistry
• Course: CHM 4139
• Professor: Roberto Chica

Document Summary

Enzymes have evolved to catalyse specific reactions on specific substrates, which are involved in the organism"s physiology. The is the result of the complementarity in shape, charge and hydrophobicity between the active site cavity and the substrate. Substrate specificity is defined as the range of substrates that an enzyme can transform into products by using its natural catalytic activity. This includes unnatural substrates that are not found in the cell, and for which the enzyme has not evolved. Narrow specificity: few substrates are transformed by the enzyme. Broad specificity: many substrates are transformed by the enzyme. Description is most of the time qualitative, and is used to compare between 2 or more enzymes. Broad: indicates that the enzyme performs the same reaction on a large range of substrate usually with a similar efficiency(rate). Low: indicates that the enzyme does not transform efficiently the molecule in question (specific molecule).