Enzymes...What are they?

Question

What are enzymes, what are their functions, and why are enzymes important?

Answer 1

Enzymes are proteins that catalyze chemical reactions.

Your textbook almost certainly lists different types of enzymes and what they do. Any list that I give would alert your teacher to your cheating because it would be very long and full of complexities.

They are important for biomedical research, for industrial applications, for some household products, for medical tests, and so on. A simpler answer, though, is that they are necessary for life as we know it.

Answer 2

Enzymes are proteins that accelerate reactions like catalysis. They are found inside of cells and operate to make reactions possible with less energy or at a lower temperature thus allowing vital life processes to operate.

According to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enzymes
"Enzymes are proteins that catalyze (i.e. accelerate) chemical reactions. In enzymatic reactions, the molecules at the beginning of the process are called substrates, and the enzyme converts them into different molecules, the products. Almost all processes in a biological cell need enzymes in order to occur at significant rates. Since enzymes are extremely selective for their substrates and speed up only a few reactions from among many possibilities, the set of enzymes made in a cell determines which metabolic pathways occur in that cell.

Like all catalysts, enzymes work by lowering the activation energy (Ea or ΔG‡) for a reaction, thus dramatically accelerating the rate of the reaction. Most enzyme reaction rates are millions of times faster than those of comparable uncatalyzed reactions. As with all catalysts, enzymes are not consumed by the reactions they catalyze, nor do they alter the equilibrium of these reactions. However, enzymes do differ from most other catalysts by being much more specific. Enzymes are known to catalyze about 4,000 biochemical reactions."

Answer 3

Enzymes are molecules of protein that are made from amino acid chains. They are produced by all living organisms and by plants.There are three types of enzymes are there;

Metabolic enzymes.
Digestive enzymes.
Food enzymes.

http://symbiosisonlinepublishing.com/proteins-enzyme-research/