Chemical Reactions & Enzymes - Means to write that information down. - Means to write that information down.

Chemical Reactions and Enzymes As we have seen living things are made of chemical compounds, but more importantly chemistry isn’t just what life is made of, chemistry is also what life does.

Chemical Reactions  Chemical reaction – is a process that changes one set of chemicals into another set of chemicals.  The elements or compounds that enter into a chemical reaction are the reactants.  The elements or compounds produced by a chemical reaction are known as products.

Energy in Reactions  Energy is neither created nor destroyed, therefore energy is released or absorbed whenever chemical bonds form or are broken.  Chemical reactions that release energy often occur spontaneously. Chemical reactions that absorb energy will not without a source of energy.

Activation Energy  Do all reactions occur spontaneously?  If this were true what would happen to your textbooks?  Will wood burn only if you light it with a match. Chemists call the energy that is needed to get a reaction started the activation energy Chemists call the energy that is needed to get a reaction started the activation energy  Fig 2–19 (p. 50) shows, activation energy is a factor in whether the overall chemical reaction releases energy or absorbs energy.

Enzymes  Some chemical reactions that make life possible are too slow or have activation energies that are too high to make them practical for life.  These reactions require catalysts or substances that speed up the rate of a chemical reaction.  Catalysts work by lowering a reaction’s activation energy.

Two paths will take you to the same end location. Which one will take less energy to get there and will happen faster?

Activation Energy  What significance do these energy changes have to do with living things? In order to stay alive, organisms need to carry out reactions that require energy.

Enzymes  Enzymes – are special proteins that act as biological catalysts.  Enzymes speed up chemical reactions that take place in cells.  Enzymes are very specific, generally catalyzing only one chemical reaction.

Enzymes  For a chemical reaction to occur, the reactants must collide with enough energy so that existing bonds will be broken and new bonds will be formed.  Enzymes provide a place where reactants can be brought together to react.  The reactants of enzyme – catalyzed reactions are known as substrates.

The Enzyme/Substrate Complex  Each protein (enzyme) has a specific shape, the substrate binds to the active site on the protein to help speed up the reaction.  AKA “lock and key”

Enzymes - In Summary Digestive Enzyme Basics

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