"What we're defining here is what evolution had to overcome, that the enzyme is surmounting a tremendous obstacle, a reaction half-life of 2.3 billion years." Knowing how long reactions would take ...

Bionic enzymes got a needed boost in speed thanks to new research. By pairing a noble metal with a natural enzyme, scientists created a hybrid capable of churning out molecules at a rate comparable to ...

Enzyme kinetics involves the measurement of the rate at which chemical reactions that are catalyzed by enzymes occur. Knowledge about the kinetics of an enzyme can reveal useful information about its ...

It is well known in physics and chemistry that equal charges repel each other, while opposite charges attract. It was long assumed that this principle also applies when enzymes – the biological ...

CHAPEL HILL -- All biological reactions within human cells depend on enzymes. Their power as catalysts enables biological reactions to occur usually in milliseconds. But how slowly would these ...

Enzymes help with specific functions that are vital to the operation and overall health of the human body. They help speed up chemical reactions and are essential for respiration, digestion, muscle ...

We therefore long suspected that the crucial cyclization reaction could occur spontaneously, without the help of another enzyme," says Sarah O'Connor, explaining the starting point of the research.

Enzymes often elicit envy from organic chemists. Highly evolved by nature, these biocatalysts can carry out reactions with a selectivity that surpasses most synthetic catalysts. Yet they act on such a ...

Hydrophilic and hydrophobic molecules tend to avoid each other. But phosphoglycosyl transferases, enzymes that reside on bacterial cell membranes, can bring these odd couples together and catalyze ...