describe a biological catalyst?
A biological catalyst is the almighty enzyme. An enzyme takes the food that animals eat, yes including you, and breaks the raw stuff into more tangible byte sizes pieces for all the cells of a living organism. So essentially a catalysts is a mover of a biological system. Whole systems such as the apex predator the great bald eagle. I think the whole system catalyst are the decomposer organisms. The little crawlers like shredders and mushrooms. I hope that this helps
A biological catalyst is a subclass protein called an enzyme. Enzymes are biological catalysts that increase the rate of chemical reactions. A catalyst does the following: 1) Increases the rate of reaction 2) Is not itself changed at the end of the reaction 3) Does not change the reaction or its final result The amount of energy required for this reaction is called activation energy. The enzyme lowers the activation energy necessary for the reaction to take place, thus speeding up the process.
One of the best known biological catalyst reactions is the Fixation of Nitrogen. Biological Nitrogen Fixation (BNF) occurs when atmospheric nitrogen is converted to ammonia by a bacterial enzyme called nitrogenase. Microorganisms that fix nitrogen are called diazotrophs. The formula for BNF is: N2 + 8H+ + 8e? + 16 ATP → 2NH3 + H2 + 16ADP + 16 Pi Although ammonia (NH3) is the direct product of this reaction, it is quickly ionized to ammonium (NH4+). In free-living diazotrophs, the nitrogenase-generated ammonium is assimilated into glutamate through the glutamine synthetase/glutamate synthase pathway.
Enzyme are biological catalyst, proteinous in nature, formed in animal's body by exocrine cell, present in inactive form, generally ends with suffix ase e.g enterikinase with exceptions pepsin, specific in nature not only speed up biological reactions but also lower down the reactions inside the body.
Biological catalysts work in similar fashion to inorganic catalysts. The lower the activation energy (Delt. G) of the rate limiting step in an SN1 or SN2 reaction. However, they are comprised of biomolecules susceptible to degradation and are quite sensitive to temperature change.
