Why do enzymes function only under mild conditions?

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All right. Hello everyone. So this question is a true or false and it says that enzymes perform well under extreme conditions. Option A says true and option B says false. Now recall first and foremost that the vast majority of enzymes are proteins. And if there's one thing to know about proteins is that their structure is very, very directly correlated with their function. And so it's very important that the conditions the protein is in maintain that optimal structure to enhance its function. And so it's because of this fact that we talked about or that we talk about the optimal conditions in which a given enzyme will operate under. And so this includes things like temperature, things like ph and even changing the even changing the solvent could affect enzyme activity. But we do also consider other effects like the presence or absence of cofactors and also the specificity of a substrate to an enzyme. And we'll talk about what all this means in a second. Now, it's worth mentioning that the optimal conditions of any given enzyme are going to be more suited to the natural environment of that enzyme. For example, enzymes in your blood would prefer a more neutral Ph, whereas enzymes in your stomach would prefer a more acidic Ph because that reflects their environment. So in addition to the temperature and Ph or actually let me just go ahead and mention the effect of temperature because PH has already discussed. Now, temperature, if the temperature is increased or decreased too far from the optimal range, what that does is disrupt interactions between side chains. And when I refer to side chains, I'm talking about the side chains of amino acids that give each amino acid, their distinct identity amino acids linked together to form polypeptide chains that ultimately become a protein after folding, right. And so temperature and ph are going to affect the activity of an enzyme if removed too far from the optimal conditions of the enzyme. Now, in addition to this, the presence or absence of cofactors, if relevant can affect the the activity of an enzyme because some enzymes require co factors which are nonprotein compounds that the enzyme requires to catalyze its reaction, right, to perform its function. If cofactors are not present, then the enzyme may not be able to function at all. And also we talk about substrate specificity because enzymes act on compounds known as their substrate, right, the substrate binds to the enzyme and the chemical reaction proceeds. And so if temperature and ph for example, affect the structure of the enzyme, what that could do is affect the structure of the active site of the enzyme, which is where the substrate binds. So if the, if the structure is changing, then it's possible that the substrate won't even be able to bind and therefore the reaction will not proceed. So the bottom bottom line here is that the statement given in the question is false. And the reason it's not true is because enzymes in actuality require a very, very specific set of conditions to function optimally and there you have it. So with that being said, thank you so very much for watching and I hope you found this helpful.

Why do enzymes function only under mild conditions?

Verified video answer for a similar problem:

Key Concepts

Enzyme Structure and Function

Optimal Conditions for Enzyme Activity

Biological Relevance of Mild Conditions