8.1 Metabolism

Question 1

what are metabolic pathways?

Answer 1

a series of connected chemical reactions that feed one another.

Question 2

how do enzymes affect activation energy?

Answer 2

Enzymes are biological catalysts, they lower the activation energy for reactions. The lower the activation energy for a reaction, the faster the rate. Therefore enzymes speed up reactions by lowering the activation energy.

Question 3

What different types of inhibitors are there?

Answer 3

competitive or non-competitive

Question 4

competitive inhibition?

Answer 4

reversible, bind to the active site of the enzyme

Question 5

non-competitive inhibition?

Answer 5

the inhibitor binds to the allosteric site of the enzyme, changes the shape of the active site of the enzyme, generally irreversible.

Question 6

describe the induced-fit model.

Answer 6

is a model for enzyme-substrate interaction. It describes that only the proper substrate is capable of inducing the proper alignment of the active site that will enable the enzyme to perform its catalytic function

Question 7

explain the control of metabolic pathways by end-product inhibition

Answer 7

the product of the last reaction in the pathway inhibits the enzyme that catalyzes the first reaction of the pathway

Question 8

how is metabolism being investigated through bioinformatics?

Answer 8

by using databases of target enzymes/receptors/genes for organisms and diseases;

Question 9

how is chemogenomics being used to fight malaria?

Answer 9

allowed new drugs which inhibit malarial enzymes and not human ones to be identified;
new avenues of research opened up