Have you ever thought about all the chemical reactions that happen in your body? How they mix together to create new things or break down old things? Well, a lot of these reactions are controlled by something called enzymes!
The main job of an enzyme is to speed up the reactions in your body. They can help you digest food faster, help speed up the protein production process, or help in cellular respiration.
There are actually different types of enzymes; biological versus non-biological. The difference is that biological enzymes are created by your body, and non-biological ones are things that can be obtained from the environment. This article will be focusing on biological enzymes.
Enzymes are a type of protein. They are created in your ribosome, and sent out to carry out their jobs in other parts of the body. Enzymes look like funny-shaped globs, usually with lots of crevices and folds. Below, are pictures of different enzymes:
To understand enzymes, we must first understand how chemical reactions work. Usually, some type of material changes chemically to create something new. We can represent chemical reactions with this formula:
Reactant A + Reactant B → Product
In this formula, we see that two "reactants" are combined to form a product. The reactants can be any type of chemical or substance, such as salt or sugar.
There are two main parts of an enzyme:
The Active Site
The Regulatory Site
The active site is where different reactants come together. From here, the enzyme speeds up the chemical reaction that should take place between the reactants. After the chemical reaction is completed, the products leave the enzyme. In order for some enzymes to work, sometimes some metals need to be present on the enzyme. These helping metals are known as cofactors. Finally, the regulatory site is where other chemicals can latch on to an enzyme to temporarily switch the enzyme on or off.
Enzymes are very helpful substances in your body, but they need the perfect conditions in order to work properly. These conditions have to have proper temperature and pH. Changes in these two measurements can impact how the enzyme works. For example, very high temperatures can cause the enzyme to stop working. Similarly, very high or low pH environments can also impact the enzyme. This change is called denaturation. When an enzyme doesn't work as well or completely becomes inactive due to its environment, we can say that it has become denatured.
In conclusion, enzymes are VERY helpful substances because they speed up chemical reactions in your body. However, they need certain temperatures and pHs in order to work properly. 
**The substrate is another name for the reactants¹ that fit into an enzyme's active
reactants¹ = see above to check out the definition of a reactant
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