Enzyme kinetics is a science that is responsible for examining the speed of chemical reactions in which enzymes participate. This analysis on the speed and activity of the enzymes, allows to obtain a deep knowledge, on the method of action of the enzyme, the role that it plays within the metabolism, how its activity is controlled within the cell and how it can be inhibited. action by the bear of drugs or other types of substance.
In general, enzymes are proteins capable of handling other molecules without causing any type of alteration by the reaction. These molecules that are talked about are called "substrates". These molecules have the ability to fuse to the active site of an enzyme. This means that the substrate binds to a certain area of the enzyme, leading to catalysis, which means the achievement of a product from a substrate. All this is possible thanks to the enzymatic action.
It is important to bear in mind that certain enzymes have the peculiarity of fusing to different substrates and depending on the fact that they can obtain different products. For example, a protease has the ability to manipulate different proteins to obtain a variety of polypeptides. There are also cases where the enzyme can be fused to two substrates at the same time, an example of this occurs with DNA polymerase, which binds to the DNA chain and a nucleotide, to add it to the chain.
The rate of enzyme catalyzed resistance becomes proportional (to some extent) to the substrate concentration. That is, when the density of the substrate is low, certain parts of the enzyme molecules have a free active site. If the amount of substrate increases,. These free active sites will eventually join you; It would accelerate the reaction rate substrate products. Now, if that amount of substrate continues to increase, there will be a time when there will be no more free active sites, which will prevent the rate of the reaction from continuing to grow. In this case, the enzyme is said to be saturated.
Finally, it can be said that the two most outstanding characteristics within enzyme kinetics are the time it takes for an enzyme to become saturated and the maximum speed that the reaction catalyzed by this enzyme can obtain.
