Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Enzymes: evolution of catalysis and specificity

Enzymes probably didn't "appear" in nature as specific as they are today, in fact the first enzymes should be very general (break ester or peptide bonds, etc.) and then as a need of more control of the reactions, these enzymes have been duplicated and each of these copies specialized in order to account to specific metabolites (cross between substrates and products) that define a unique (or almost unique) reaction.

This process could proceed an then we would reach a situation where we will have more than one enzyme for each reaction (isoenzymes) that will have different control in different types of cells.

In order to prove this hypothesis one could create a simulator with a control system (enzyme sysnthesis and degradation) with both general and specific enzymes and show the differences between the control of metabolism in these two systems

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