ENZYMES AND THEIR ACTIVITY
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Excerpt
A little over a hundred years ago, Kirchoff observed that malt diastase brought about the same change in starch as was produced by heating with acid and that the hydrolytic agent, in one instance the diastase and in the other the acid, apparently remained unchanged at the end of the reaction. In the intervening years, enzymes have been looked on as catalysts, substances that do not initiate or take a permanent part in the reaction but whose presence exerts an influence on the speed of the chemical change. They are considered to be organic in nature, produced only by living cells but not requiring the presence of the cells for their activity. Few, if any, of the chemical changes occurring in living organisms are independent of the influence of enzymes; indeed, it has been stated1 that "we may regard life as a system of cooperating enzymatic reactions." It is
