In terms of protein structure how can you explain the affects of heating and cooling enzymes?

Answer 1

heating the enzymes speeds up reaction rate because more energy is available for the proteins to use in the reaction within the enzyme. cooling the enzymes increases reaction tiem because less energy is available.

Answer 2

Enzyme activity is define by its 3D structure at the activity site. Since enzyme is largely protein in nature, a change in the structure of the protein ( in any level, but most likely to be the quaternary, tertiary and secondary structure) at the activity site will affect the enzyme, most likely in a degenerative way, making it useless and denatured.

Answer 3

What Neil said is correct. But remember when you heat a enzyme to a certain point beyond it's capacity of taking the heat, because it is a protein structure, the stature will denature. Once it denatures it will not able to fit into its substrate's binding sites. The reaction will slow down and eventually stop. I am not sure about the cooling part.

Answer 4

Cooling has little effect on protein structure, and is necessary for techniques such as CryoEM and X-Ray crystallography. It allows for preservation of structure, though it decreases the free energy for mediating the enzymatic reation. So for an enzyme it's bad functionally to cool it, but it's good to preserve structure.

Heating is correct as above.