What happens if an enzyme is not functioning in a chemical reaction in a living organism that ne

What happens if an enzyme is not functioning in a chemical...

Key Concepts

Reaction Rate

The reaction rate describes how quickly a chemical reaction proceeds. Enzymes dramatically increase reaction rates to meet the metabolic demands of living organisms. When an enzyme is not functioning properly, the reaction still occurs but at a significantly reduced pace, which may be insufficient to support normal biological functions.

Activation Energy

Activation energy is the minimum energy needed to initiate a chemical reaction. Enzymes reduce the activation energy, thereby increasing the reaction rate. Without a functioning enzyme, the reaction may still occur but only at a much slower rate because fewer molecules have the necessary energy to overcome the barrier.

Catalysis

Catalysis refers to the process of increasing the rate of a chemical reaction by lowering the activation energy barrier. In biological systems, enzymes perform this role, allowing reactions to proceed much faster than they would under normal conditions without the catalyst.

Enzymes

Enzymes are biological catalysts that speed up chemical reactions in living organisms by lowering the activation energy required for the reaction. They are usually proteins that bind to specific substrates, facilitating the conversion to products, and thus ensuring that essential biochemical processes occur at a rate sufficient for life.

Transcript

00:01 For this question, why don't we first start out by thinking about what it is that enzymes actually do with regards to chemical reactions? because that will be the key thing for answering this question.

00:15 So before we get into the specific definition of what enzymes do, let's think about the visualization of an enzyme.

00:25 So here we have, let's say, in this cell, we need to combine the green.

00:30 In the red molecules.

00:32 And this is something that will happen naturally, but it requires a lot of energy to form these bonds.

00:38 But we need this final molecule for the cell to live.

00:41 What this enzyme can do is bring these two molecules a closer together and decrease the amount of energy needed for this bond to form.

00:54 So this will mean that the reaction will happen faster and more of these molecules would be made.

01:02 Now, we've kind of already answered this, but the more detailed answer into how enzymes work is they lower the activation energy required for a reaction.

01:12 Here, i've kind of drawn this graph.

01:15 There are similar ones in your textbook showing the level of energy in a system along a chemical reaction path.

01:24 When we start out with the reactants, they have relatively low energy.

01:28 And in this example, the products will have a relatively high energy.

01:34 So we've had to input a lot of energy in order to get them up to this point.

01:38 Maybe it's an example like this where we have to form a bunch of chemical bonds which require energy to be made.

01:47 What happens in the black line without the enzyme is that you need this big bump of energy in order for this reaction to happen.

01:58 When you add the enzyme, which is the green path, it helps to lower the amount of energy needed for this reaction to occur, which helps make it occur faster or a higher rate.

02:12 Now this question is asking, what happens when we remove this enzyme? let's say this is gone, so this is gone.

02:27 And now we just have this process happening.

02:33 We still need this to happen for the cell to live, but our enzyme is missing.

02:39 Well, let's think about it.

02:42 In this case, this reaction is still happening in the black.

02:47 It just requires a lot more energy to occur, so it's going to happen slower as that energy needs to build up.

02:56 And that's kind of the case here.

02:58 In this case, maybe these two molecules will meet, and there will be enough energy in between them.

03:04 In order to bond...

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