Investigating the effects of surface area on the rate of enzyme reactions.

... AS Biology Coursework assignment Investigating the effects of surface area on the rate of enzyme reactions By Scott Humm Introduction Enzymes basically are biological catalysts. What this means is they have the ability to speed up reactions without actually being used up themselves. Enzymes are globular proteins and they have a three-dimensional shape, which is very precise and never varies between two examples of the same protein. The active site for all molecules of the same enzyme will be made up of the same arrangement of amino acids. This exact shape and arrangement of amino acids enables the enzymes to be highly specific and this defines which substrate they bind to in the active site. Because they are so specific, enzymes are thought to catalyse substrate into two different products by the "Lock and Key hypothesis". Diagram taken from http://schools.moe.edu.sg/chijsjc/Biology/Enzyme/enzyme.htm This diagram shows how enzymes catalyse the breakdown of a substrate molecule into two products. The

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