Physiology of Finfish and Shellfish (2+1)

4.3.2.11 What is the role of enzymes in metabolic pathway?

Enzymes play an important role in the various metabolic pathways. They are present there as coenzymes with some other group attached to them having substrate specificity to accelerate the particular metabolic reaction apart from that various co-factors also played important role in enhancing their mechanism of action. Particular type of metabolic reaction carried out by particular enzyme like the digestion of food. In that food is comprised of different components. Eg. Carbohydrates are acted upon by enzymes like maltase, sucrase, galactases etc. to breakdown into simple sugar.

Enzymes also play an important role in DNA and RNA synthesis like ribonucleotide reductase to convert ribonucleic acid into deoxyribonucleic acid and reverse transcriptase to form cDNA from mRNA.