In order for chemical reactions to break the bonds of some initial substances, they require an activating force. This is what are called reagents, which allow transforming the initial substances into final substances or products. Enzymes, as good catalysts, are responsible for increasing the speed of chemical reactions, reducing the activation energy.
Enzymes are proteins that normally catalyze biochemical reactions in living specimens with great precision. It is possible that there are some enzymes with absolute precision, that is, they are only suitable for catalyzing a specific reaction. An example of this is urease, which is responsible for catalyzing the hydrolysis of urea.
There are other enzymes than a group precision, as is the case of proteolytic enzymes, which are responsible for catalyzing the hydrolysis of peptides with some structural properties. There are also enzymes with stereochemical precision, which are responsible for catalyzing the stereoisomer reactions of a specific molecule and not the other.
This catalytic movement, for most enzymes, is established in a small area of the molecule, known as the "active center." The molecule on which the enzyme works is called substrate, it binds to the active center creating an enzyme complex and while it is attached to the enzyme, the substrate becomes the product and this is where it is separated from the enzyme.
The catalysis enzyme is symbolized by the following equation:
E + S → ES → E + P, in this case, the E means the enzyme, the S symbolizes the substrate, the P is the product of the reaction and the ES refers to the Enzyme-Substrate complex.
In most enzymatic reactions, the accumulation of enzymes is much lower than that of the substrate (E <S), therefore, the ES will be smaller than S, this will allow a steady state approximation to be applied for ES. During enzymatic catalysis, both the temperature and the PH will have a good influence on the acceleration of the reaction, favoring the existence of highly efficient values, for which the reaction rate is definitive. In this way, the enzymes can be deactivated much faster, when the temperature reaches values higher than 35 ° C, due to the denaturation of the proteins.
