Biological complexity: transient enzyme complexity (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, May 31, 2017, 20:01 (2519 days ago) @ David Turell

Without enzymes to speed reactions life would not exist. Now transient enzymes are revealing their evanescent changes and helping to explain how enzymes work:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170531094844.htm

"By modifying the enzyme adenylate kinase, researchers were able to isolate the molecule and study it using the quantitative techniques X-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy.

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"Biological life is dependent on a large number of cellular, chemical reactions that are often extremely slow and can take months or years to complete. For chemical and biological time-scales to match, chemical reactions are sped up in cells with the use of enzymes as efficient biocatalysts.

"Over the last decade of research it has been made clear that enzyme structures that only exist briefly and transiently can be entirely essential for the catalytic function.

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"The results indicated that the function in one enzyme is entirely dependent on its inherent dynamics, and without dynamics the enzyme would be rendered useless. Furthermore, it turned out that the transient state bound its substrate molecules much stronger than the natural proteins. The results gave us further clues as to how enzymes can speed up reactions with such incredible specificity and efficacy. All the while, the method that we developed can be generally useful in studies of other enzymes.'"

Comment: Enzymes are huge molecules, and perform precise functions. This level of complexity requires design. Please look at the diagrammed structure of the molecule used in this study.