BI110 Chapter Notes - Chapter 11: Deprotonation, Digestive Enzyme, Activation Energy
Document Summary
A catalyst is a substance that speeds up a chemical reaction without being consumed by the reaction. Catalysts achieve this by lowering the activation energy of the reaction. Enzymes are biological catalysts that speed up chemical reactions inside cells. Most enzymes are proteins, but they can also be composed of rna, which makes the ribozymes. Enzymes facilitate the transformation of initial substances called substrates into different molecules called products. The suffix - ase indicates that a molecule is an enzyme, although some enzymes, such as the digestive enzyme pepsin, do not carry this suffix. The rest of the enzyme"s name details its function. For example, a protease is an enzyme that degrades proteins; a lipase is an enzyme that breaks down lipids. As substrates are transformed into products during a chemical reaction, they go through an intermediate transition state. The chemical reaction is at its highest energy at the transition state.
