Proteins and Enzymes Flashcards
What are proteins?
proteins are polymers made from amino acid monomers, bonded together by peptide bonds
What are enzymes?
Enzymes are proteins that are biological catalysts and they speed up chemical reactions everywhere in living organisms
What can enzymes speed up?
Enzymes can speed up the breakdown (degradation) of large molecules into smaller molecules
What is a catalyst?
A catalysts is a substance that speeds up the rate of a chemical reaction
What are the four properties of an
enzyme?
- to speed up a chemical reaction
- enzymes are specific as they speed up only one particular reaction
- they don’t get used up after a reaction
- break and build up reactions
What is optimum?
Optimum is the best condition an enzyme is most active at eg. Temperature, pH
What are the four functions of protein?
- Structural
- hormone
- enzyme
- antibodies
What can denature an enzyme?
Extreme temperature and the wrong level of pH can denature an enzyme
Why do denatured enzymes no longer wok?
Denatured enzymes no longer work because the shape of the enzyme is changed and it has lost it’s active site so a substrate can no longer attach to it
What is denaturation?
The change in the shape of a protein such as an enzyme that results in them no longer fitting their substrate.
What is a substrate?
The molecule that binds to the enzyme
What is a product?
What you end up with at the end of a reaction
