What is the role of enzymes in dehydration synthesis?

Question

What is the role of enzymes in dehydration synthesis?
This is my understanding: dehydration synthesis is when a water molecule is removed and two reactants combine to form a new larger molecule. What does the enzyme do? Speed up the reaction? what is hydrolase?

Answer 1

The enzyme will serve to speed up the reaction because it holds the two substrate molecules close enough together to bond when the H+ and OH- are removed to free up bonding sites.

Hydrolase is an enzyme that does the opposite. Hydrolase makes it easier to take apart a molecule into two pieces and stick an H+ on one of them and an OH- on the end of the other one to keep them from bonding back together.

Hydrolysis breaks molecules by inserting parts of a water molecule. Dehydration synthesis joins molecules by removing parts of a water molecule.