Biochemistry, Proteins Enzymes

Excerpt

Every day, trillions upon trillions of chemical reactions occur in our body to make essential metabolic processes occur. Enzymes are proteins that act upon substrate molecules and decrease the activation energy necessary for a chemical reaction to occur by stabilizing the transition state. This stabilization speeds up reaction rates and makes them happen at physiologically significant rates. Enzymes bind substrates at key locations in their structure called active sites. They are typically highly specific and only bind certain substrates for certain reactions. Without enzymes, most metabolic reactions would take much longer and would not be fast enough to sustain life.