Enzymes: Structure and Function in Environmental Microbiology

This lecture introduces the fundamental concepts of enzymes, focusing on their structure and function within the context of environmental microbiology. The instructor begins by defining enzymes as proteins and elaborates on their various structural levels: primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary. Each level of structure is explained with examples, highlighting how these structures contribute to enzyme functionality. The lecture emphasizes the catalytic role of enzymes, detailing how they lower activation energy and accelerate reaction rates without being consumed in the process. Specific examples of enzymatic reactions, such as urea hydrolysis and toluene oxidation, illustrate the significant speedup enzymes provide in biochemical processes. The instructor also discusses enzyme specificity, noting that some enzymes are highly specific to particular substrates while others can act on a range of compounds. The classification of enzymes into categories such as oxidoreductases, transferases, and ligases is presented, along with examples of each type, providing a comprehensive overview of enzyme diversity and their ecological importance.