ENZYMATIC REACTION ; EXERGONIC AND ENDERGONIC

REACTION, FACTORS AFFECTING ENZYME ACTIVITY AND

CLASSIFICATION OF ENZYMES AND ITS FUNCTIONS IN
CELLULAR RESPIRATION

MUHAMMAD AMMAR BIN ALI

MOHD IZZAT WAFI BIN MD YAZI

ILYANA BINTI AMRAN

NUR SYUHADA BINTI AHMAD TERMIZI

Written Report Of Metabolism And Cell Division (Bio 150)

Diploma In Science In The Faculty Of Applied Sciences

Universiti Teknologi Mara Cawangan Perak, Kampus Tapah

19 DECEMBER 2017
 INTRODUCTION

1.0 INTRODUCTION OF ENZYME

All living organisms maintain their structure and function through chemical reactions.
Metabolism is the sum of all the chemical reactions that occur in the cells. Many of these
metabolic reactions would either not occur or occur too slowly without the help of metabolic
assistants called enzymes. Without enzymes, living organisms would not be able to carry out
many of the general characteristics of life. As we will see, enzymes play an important role in
how our cells, and ultimately our bodies, function ( Sylvia, Michael 2013).

Enzymes are biological or organic catalysts, which speeds up a reaction without

undergoing any permanent change of their shape. Most enzymes are made from globular
proteins that are produced by living cells. Enzymes are also proteins that are folded into
complex shapes that allow smaller molecules to fit into them. The place where these substrate
molecules fit is called the active site. Enzymes are proteins that have catalytic functions
indispensable to maintenance and activity of life. All chemical reactions occurring in a living
organism are dependent on the catalytic actions of enzymes. At present, there are about 4,000
kinds of enzymes whose actions are well known.

All enzymes are characterized by having a high degree of specificity for their
substrates, and they accelerate the rate of chemical reactions tremendously. Enzymes speed
up their reactions by a few of factors. Most enzymes function in the cellular environment at
mild conditions of temperature, pH, activator, inhibitor and salt. Enzymes create an
environment to make the reaction more favourable. The active site of the enzyme which
typically like a pocket that lined with amino acids will bind to its substrate then
transformation of products occurs. Therefore, the amino acids that form the active site
provide the specificity of substrate binding and the proper chemical environment so that the
reaction occurs more rapidly than it otherwise would. Enzymes can be affected by increasing
their activity (activators) or decreasing their activity (inhibitors). Many drugs act by
inhibiting enzymes. For an example, Aspirin works by inhibiting COX-1 and COX-2, the
enzymes that produce prostaglandin, a hormonal messenger that signals inflammation. By
inhibiting the activity of these enzymes, aspirin suppresses our experience of pain and
inflammation.
 Enzymes can have molecular weights ranging from about 10,000 to more than 1
million. Molecular weight is the sum of the atomic weights of a molecule's atoms. In
chemistry, the term tends to be used interchangeably with molecular mass. Some enzymes
have molecular weights that fall below the range listed above. A small number of enzymes
are not proteins but consists of small catalytic of RNA molecules. Thus, enzymes are multi-
protein complexes which are made up of a number of individual protein sub-units.

Enzymes are classified into six classification based on the types of reactions which
there are oxidoreductase, transferase, hydrolase, lyase, ligase, and isomerase, according to the
Enzyme Commission, International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
Individual enzymes are further classified systematically based on the chemical name of the
substance modified by the enzyme (substrate) and its reaction mechanism.

Enzymes play a vital role in everyday life. Many heritable genetic disorders (diabetes,
Tay-Sachs disease) occur because there is a deficiency or total absence of one or more
enzymes. Other disease conditions (cancer) result because there is an excessive activity of
one or more enzymes. Routine medical tests monitor the activity of enzymes in the blood,
and many of the prescription drugs (penicillin, methotrexate) exert their effects through
interactions with enzymes. Enzymes and their inhibitors can be important mechanism that
involved in medicine, agriculture, and food science.
2.0 TYPES OF ENZYMATIC REACTION

2.1 ENDERGONIC AND EXERGONIC REACTION

Based on their free energy changes, chemical reactions can be classified as either
exergonic (“energy outward”) or endergonic (“energy inward”). Exergonic refers to chemical
reactions that proceed spontaneously from reactants to products with the release of energy.
The magnitude of ∆G for an exergonic reaction represents the maximum amount of work the
reaction can perform. The greater the decrease in free energy, the greater the amount of work
that could be done. Endergonic reactions required energy which that absorbs free energy from
its surroundings because this reaction essentially stores free energy in molecules. It is
nonspontaneous reaction, and the magnitude of ∆G is the quantity of energy required to drive
the reaction.

Although the terms are often used rather loosely, they are precisely defined
thermodynamic concepts based on changes in an entity called Gibbs free energy (∆G)
accompanying reactions. Reactions in which ∆G decreases are exergonic, and those in which
∆G increases are endergonic. Exergonic reactions often involve the breakdown of organic
compounds found in food, whereas endergonic reactions frequently entail synthesis of
complicated molecules. It is important to realize that the breaking of bonds does not release
energy. The phrase “energy stored in bonds” is shorthand for the potential energy that can be
released when new bonds are formed after the original bonds break, as long as the products
are of lower free energy than the reactants. The example that represents the endergonic
reaction is the process of photosynthesis which light energy is required to convert the water
and carbon dioxide into glucose and oxygen. Meanwhile, cellular respiration is the reaction
that represents exergonic reaction which ATP is released in this process.
 Biological metabolism contains many examples of both types, and living organisms
have developed elaborate techniques for coupling the two. Although a negative ∆G indicates
that energy must be added to the system before a reaction will occur, it tells us nothing about
the rate at which it will progress. As is often the case, it may go very slowly if substantial
activation energy is required to start the reaction. Living organisms have found a way around
this problem by forming protein catalysts, called enzymes, that effectively reduce the amount
of activation energy needed, and allow the reaction to proceed at a satisfactory rate. Enzymes
do not affect the free energy of the reaction, and will not enable reactions to proceed that are
not energetically feasible.
 Coupling of these two reactions; exergonic and endergonic reactions, organisms are
able to use the available energy in food they consume to construct complex proteins, lipids,
nucleic acids and carbohydrates needed for their growth and development. A well-known
example involves coupling the formation of energy-rich adenosine triphosphate (ATP) from
adenosine diphosphate (ADP) and phosphate (an endergonic reaction), with the transfer of
hydrogen, removed from organic food materials, to oxygen (an exergonic reaction). The
process is called oxidative phosphorylation. Energy stored in ATP may be used subsequently
when the exergonic conversion of ATP back to ADP and phosphate is coupled with the
endergonic synthesis of a needed cellular component.
CONCLUSION

Enzymes are very efficient catalyst for biochemical reactions. They speed up the
reactions by providing an alternative pathway of lowering the activation energy. Enzymes are
essential in maintenance life because most chemical reactions in biological cells, such as the
digestion of food, which it would occur too slow or would lead to different products without
the enzymatic reaction. There are two types of enzymatic reactions which are exergonic
reaction that released the energy and endergonic reaction that required energy to proceed the
reaction. The rate of enzymatic reaction depends on a few factors that help the enzyme speed
up the chemical reactions which are temperature where the enzymes will be denatured above
their optimum temperature, the pH where the enzymes has their own pH to carry out their
reaction, the activators and the inhibitors where the enzyme reaction will decrease through
reversible inhibitor (competitive inhibition and non-competitive inhibition) and irreversible
inhibitor.