How amazing enzymes are

Enzymes are biological catalysts.

Enzymes are proteins.

Galactosidase enzyme
Substrates: maltose, which is broken into two glucose molecules

These two sentences are actually the main way to characterize an enzyme. Firstly, a biological catalyst is a substance that speeds up the rate of the reaction (how quickly it happens per unit time) without changing the equilibrium. Further, enzymes are biological catalysts because they are made within the body. It's actually easy to envision two reactions which are reversible- the products can react to form the initial reactants- to understand what is the equilibrium that I'm talking about and how enzymes are maybe best described as the second hand. That is because the reactants can react together on their own but that would take a long time so enzymes, due to their ability which I would talk about as we progress, come and help with lowering the activation energy( the energy needed for the molecules to engage with each other) without being directly involved. Come to think of it,they remind me of industrial machines which help put and secure the cap of bottles on; they do help but after finishing one bottle they can get on with the cap of the next without being changed.


Secondly, they are proteins. Proteins are biological molecules which are made up of amino acids, which bond through peptide bonds. This is really one of the most exciting thing about enzymes and

A post about synapses

You can try to identify the structures

"SynapseSchematic lines" by Thomas Splettstoesser (www.scistyle.com) - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.


Synapses resemble a basic conversation between two individuals and of course, leave room for other people to enter. Person A tells something to Person B and because they speak the same language and the two are healthy individuals, the message is delivered to the receptor who may say the same thing to Person C or something as a result of the previously received information. But for our brains, the two persons are representations of two neurons and the language is

Look closer

When you see something as a whole it's easy to overlook soo many interesting things and details.

Cells are the perfect unity designed to work in the easiest or most efficient way while displaying complexity.That basic structure that you see in school books is one of an ideal cell that might as well not exist-cells are different,most of them are specialised so that they can only carry out certain roles in an organism and that is reflected in their structure(their membrane,organelles and enzymes and so on) or they are the very start of anything-stem cells-cells that can grow into almost every type of cell(I'm planning on doing a separate post on this so I won't go into details now).

Nowadays,with the help of technology we have been able to see beyond that 'simple'.With the use of stains,fixatives and types of microscopes(just to name a few) the picture of cell has evolved and still has a long way to go.Besides human or animal cells ,in general,now there are pictures of bacteria and viruses that look better than ever before.

Here are a few very interesting pictures I found:

RUB, LS Zellmorphologie und Molekulare Neurobiologie (Department of Cell Morphology and Molecular Neurobiology)

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This image shows the neuron from a mouse's hippocampus surrounded by a special structure of the extracellular matrix.Perineuronal net in blue and various structures of a synapse are shown in red,green and yellow.
The hippocampus is a primitive component of the brain that is very important in short-term and long-term memory.A synapse is the connection between a neuron and another cell(neuronal or not) that allows information in the form of electrical signal to be transmitted.

by Muthugapatti K. Kandasamy from The University of Georgia

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   In this image you can see bovine pulmonary artery endothelial cells*-stained for actin* in pink,mitochondria* in green and DNA* in yellow.

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The endothelial cells line the inside of the circulatory system and actin is a structural protein.Mitochondria are important organelles as they are the site of ATP(adenosine triphospate) production-the energy currency of the cell.DNA-deoxyribonucleic acid-is a molecule that contains the genetic information of a cell and is very important for all aspects of a cell's function.

Wei Li, National Eye Institute, National Institutes of Health

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You can see here the layers of cells in the retina.The layer at the top(coloured in green) is made of photoreceptors-that actually convert the light into electrical signals that will go to the brain.There are 2 best-known types of photoreceptors in the retina-one of which helps us with coloured vision.A key word here is rhodopsin.Rhodopsin is a molecule that's responsible for starting the process of converting light into electrical signals-it changes shape when light hits.The molecule is embedded in the cell membrane of a photoreceptor-in the image;the very first part of the green layer(if you look at that layer as it might be cut into 2 parts-it's not but just for the sake of understanding).The information is transmitted deeper from neuron to neuron until it reaches the optical nerve->brain.

Heinz Feldmann, Peter Jahrling, Elizabeth Fischer and Anita Mora, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health

                                                                     source of image

The Ebola virus.There are 5 types of this virus,each,after multiplying in a host cell emerges to infect again.Viruses like this ones do not really destroy cells-they 'convert' them into a virus-factory-cell.The virus can infect the lining of blood vessels which would lead to excessive bleeding and eventually death-through decreased blood volume.

Seth Pincus, Elizabeth Fischer and Austin Athman, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health

                                                                  source of image

Here you can see in yellow the HIV virus-the Human Immunodeficiency Virus.This virus attacks cells(especially T cells-a common target-in blue) and takes over the normal machinery so that it can replicate.As the immunity system is affected,people infected become susceptible to a lot of diseases which the body is not able to fight off,The virus causes AIDS and can be detected.

These are just a few interesting examples I found on the Internet,you can check out more about them if you want(I put the link to the source of every photo).It's amazing how everything is so special and different,don't you think?

Cristina

These pictures are not mine and I do not take credit for them.Each has a link directing to the original source.