THE IMPETUS for understanding how enzymes function is inspired by their enormous catalytic efficiency and their exquisite substrate stereospecificity. With the advent of the determination of enzyme structure and the application of physical organic tools to examine the reaction coordinate for the enzymatic transformation of the substrate, penetrating insights have been gained as to the […]
Enzymes are biological molecules which accelerate the rate, and often direct the specificity, of a chemical reaction. Like all catalysts, they are not themselves consumed in the reactions in which they participate but are regenerated to take part in multiple cycles. Transformations which are very slow, such as the breakdown of DNA, can be accelerated […]