Question

Are enzymes specific or general?

Answer 1

Enzymes:

1. Enzymes are mostly proteins that catalyze various biochemical reactions.
2. Enzymes are highly specific. The active site of an enzyme exhibits high specificity to the substrate.
3. There are different types of enzyme specificity such as group specificity, absolute specificity, stereospecificity, etc.

The specific action of enzymes:

1. When an enzyme act on different substrates that possess specific functional groups, it is known as group specificity.
2. Example- peptide bonds are hydrolyzed by pepsin which targets bonds between hydrophobic amino acids with aromatic side chains such as phenylalanine, tyrosine, and tryptophan.
3. In absolute specificity, the enzyme act on a particular substrate.
4. Example- lactase degrades lactose (made of glucose and galactose).
5. The Stereospecificity of an enzyme depends on stereochemical forms (optical isomers) of the substrate and the enzyme act on only one isomer.
6. Example- beta-glycosidases target cellulose as they have beta-glycosidic linkage. They can not act on glycogen and starch as they consist of alpha-glycosidic linkage.