The Importance Of Enzymes

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Enzymes are found in all living organisms. They are present to speed up or accelerate a chemical reaction; referred to as a catalyst in a chemical reaction. They are essential to obtain rates to sustain life as without enzymes rates would be too slow to provide for life. Molecules at the start of the process are called substrates, the enzyme will then convert these into changed molecules which are called products, after this process the enzymes maintains the same shape. (Berg et al. 2002). According to BRENDA,(Braunschwig enzyme database 2013) "enzymes are known to catalyse over 5,000 biochemical reaction types".

All enzymes retain certain properties such as, they increase the rate of reaction significantly. This means without enzymes the
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Enzymes will only make small changes to a molecule and more steps are involved to achieve the end product. At each stage specific enzymes are used to create intermediate molecules more changes are made to finish with the required product. It is the enzymes specificity, efficiency and regulatory systems that makes all these reactions possible. Inhibitors will reduce the rate of reaction by hindering the enzyme in a certain way; this can be a permanent or a temporary change. Competitive inhibitors stop the forming of "enzyme-substrate complexes" they bind to the active site but they do not react, therefore less substrate can bind and the rate of reaction will drop. Non competitive will bind to another area other than the active site and in doing this changing the structure of the enzyme. The substrate will bind but the enzyme inhibits the catalysed …show more content…
One such disease would be Pompe disease type 2. This disease affects the lysosomal enzymes. Patients will have a total absence or a partial deficiency of this enzyme, therefore the body is not able to breakdown lysosomal glycogen leading to extremely high accumulation of this compound and cellular dysfunction. Symptoms in infants can include hypotonia "Floppy baby syndrome," respiratory and cardiac problems and problems feeding. Without treatment death usually occurs within two years but even with treatment the mortality rate is still high. Occasionally signs and symptoms do not show for up to several years. Later onset of this disease will still leave the patient severely disabled and dependent. This type of disease is inherited genetically and is called a "autosomal recessively inherited metabolic disorder." (NORD "2013".) The reason this happens is down to a mutation or a error in the DNA. DNA is copied to RNA a process called "transcription" then RNA is used to create protein this process being called "translation". It is a translation error with the RNA that causes the wrong amino acids to be placed when creating the enzyme. Both parents are carriers of this genetic disorder, if the child receives two defective enzymes it will develop a

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