Chapter 6; Vocab Questions Flashcards
An Introduction to Metabolism
Energy
The capacity to do work or create change within a cell.
Bioenergetics
The study of how living organisms, including cells, acquire, transform, and utilize energy through various metabolic pathways.
Metabolism
The sum of all chemical reactions that occur within a cell. Providing the cell with energy and materials for growth, reproduction, and health.
Metabolic Pathway
A series of connected chemical reactions that feed one another.
Free Energy
Energy that can do work when temperature and pressure are uniform, as in a living cell.
Endergonic Reactions
Absorbs free energy from its surroundings and is nonspontaneous; products have more energy than reactants.
Exergonic Reactions
Proceeds with a net release of free energy and is spontaneous; reactants have more energy than products.
Catabolic Pathway
Release energy by breaking down complex molecules into simple compounds.
Anabolic Pathway
Consume energy to build complex molecules from simpler ones.
Substrate
The reactant that an enzyme acts on.
Enzyme
A catalytic protein.
Catalyst
A chemical agent that speeds up a reaction without being consumed by the reaction.
Energy of Activation
The initial energy needed to start a chemical reaction.
Active Site
The specific region on an enzyme where substrate molecules bind and undergo a chemical reaction.
Enzyme-Substrate Complex
The intermediate stage where the enzyme is actively interacting with its target molecule to facilitate a specific biochemical transformation.
Competitive Inhibitor
Binds to the active site of an enzyme, competing with the substrate.
Cofactor
Non protein enzyme helpers, and can be both inorganic and organic.
Coenzymes
An organic molecule that binds to an enzyme’s active site and assists in the catalysis of a biochemical reaction.
Noncompetitive Inhibitor
Binds to another part of an enzyme, causing the enzyme to change shape and making the active site less effective.
Allosteric Regulation
Occurs when a regulatory molecule binds to a protein at one site and affects the protein’s function at another site, may either inhibit or stimulate an enzyme’s activity.
Feedback Inhibition
Prevents a cell from wasting chemical resources by synthesizing more product than is needed.
Phosphorylation
The process of adding a phosphate group to a molecule, most commonly a protein, which often acts as a critical regulatory mechanism by changing the proteins function or activity within the cell.
Entropy
A measure of disorder.
