What makes up an enzyme?

Answer 1

usually protein with some metallic ions

Answer 2

An enzyme is simply a protein (a folded chain of amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins).

Generally, they're extremely long and folded chains, often in excess of 500 amino acids!

These chains generally fold themselves because of chemical/magnetic forces between the amino acids. Sort of like a wire coil or accordion... if you let go of it, it springs back to an original position. Coincidentally, two types of amino acid chain folding that are very common are the "beta pleat" (accordion-style) and "alpha helix" (coil).

Some enzymes are "allosteric", meaning they are composed of 2-4 identical parts that join together.

[EDITED 11/24/2006 to add: Thank you Chaotichumor, for bringing up the different degrees of structures. I personally describe the tertiary structure as being how different secondary structures (such as the helix and pleat) clump into each other to form a true, monolithic 3-D molecule. I also like to describe quarternary structure as the interaction of separate enzyme molecules (generally identical!) via attachment to each other... the presence of a quarternary structure is pretty much the definition of an "allosteric" enzyme.]

The function of an enzyme is to "catalyze" a reaction. That means it makes a chemical reaction in our bodies go faster. The reaction might occur on its own, but it'd be really really really slow. Enzymes can make them trillions, quintillions... and so forth, times faster.

An example of an enzyme is Monoamine Oxidase (MAO). It breaks apart neurotransmitters in our nervous system when our bodies feel they are no longer needed. On their own, the neurotransmitters would not break down very quickly, and we'd quickly suffer a brain overload from having too much in the way of neurotransmitters around!

There used to be a popular class of drugs called the MAO-inhibitors (MAOIs) --- they would stop MAO (not all of the MAO in our bodies, just some!) from breaking down neurotransmitters. These drugs were used in people with depression and Parkinson's disease. Since they inhibited MAO, they would increase the amount of active neurotransmitter, aiding in the treatment of those disorders. They are rarely used anymore though, due to side effects.

Sorry if this was too much, message me if you've got questions!

Answer 3

Enzymes are made from amino acids, and they are proteins.


Enzymes are proteins that act as organic catalysts to speed chemical reactions within cells.

Answer 4

Enzymes are made up of proteins.

Answer 5

To elaborate on Indigojerk's response about alpha and beta pleated sheets.

Those are secondary structures resulted from the interaction between hydrogen bounding between the side groups of each amino acid. There are four types of structure: primary, secondary, tertiary, and quarternary. Primary is the sequence of individual AA; secondary is the interaction of hydrogen bonds of side group, tertiary (I think) is the interaction of side group other than hydrogen bounding, and quarternary is the interaction between polypeptides(chains of AA).

Answer 6

enzymes are proteins which are made up of amino acids produced by codons in mRNA.

Answer 7

polypeptide chains of amino acid

Answer 8

it is make up of protein .for more information;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enzymemore

Answer 9

molecules