Research Topic · Peer-Reviewed

Chemical Reactions of Enzymes

Chemical reactions of enzymes are the catalysed transformations in which enzymes, predominantly proteins, accelerate the conversion of substrates into products by lowering the activation energy of a reaction. Enzymes achieve this through precise positioning of substrates within an active site, stabilisation of trans…

Curated from this journal's research 📚 10 peer-reviewed articles cited Cited 103× across the literature 🔖 ISSN 2690-4829 🗓 Reviewed June 2026

Overview

Chemical reactions of enzymes are the catalysed transformations in which enzymes, predominantly proteins, accelerate the conversion of substrates into products by lowering the activation energy of a reaction. Enzymes achieve this through precise positioning of substrates within an active site, stabilisation of transition states, and participation of catalytic residues, cofactors and metal centres, while emerging from the reaction chemically unchanged. Their actions encompass major reaction classes, including oxidation-reduction, hydrolysis, group transfer and bond rearrangement, and they underpin metabolism, digestion and countless industrial and biomedical processes. The articles in this collection examine these catalytic mechanisms directly. Studies of redox enzymes and their role in free-radical scavenging illustrate oxidation-reduction chemistry, while work on chloroperoxidase shows how disrupting an active-site hydrogen-bonding network abolishes both chlorination and dismutation activities, revealing the structural basis of catalytic diversity. Carbohydrate-active enzymes feature prominently in characterisation of a novel exo-acting glucanase and xylanase, hydrolysis of cellulose by thermophilic cellulases, and the action of chitinases on chitin. Antioxidant enzymes in plant tissue and the immobilisation of enzymes on polymer films extend the scope to physiological regulation and applied biocatalysis. Together these contributions show enzyme reactions as the molecular machinery of biological chemistry, where active-site architecture dictates which reactions occur, how fast they proceed, and how they can be harnessed for technological use.

Research published in this journal

10 peer-reviewed articles, ranked by relevance. Each links to its DOI.

How this research is being cited

The 10 articles above have been cited 103 times in the scholarly literature. Citation data via OpenAlex and Crossref, updated Jun 2026.

A sample of recent works citing this journal's research on Chemical Reactions of Enzymes, linking to each citing work.

Editorial oversight

Curated from peer-reviewed research published in Enzymes (ISSN 2690-4829).

Journal editorial board
Loredana Marcolongo · Italy Melike Caglayan · United States Daniela Vullo · Italy

This page summarises published research for orientation; it is not medical or professional advice.