how do microorganisms produce enzymes?
In: Biology
Enzymes are composed of proteins, with a few exceptions which I’ll touch on below.
All known living organisms produce proteins in the same way, by using structures called ribosomes and transfer RNA’s
These work to read the sequence of bases on RNA and convert that sequence into a sequence of amino acids that form a protein.
Depending on the particular order of amino acids, the protein folds onto a convoluted 3D structure that allows them to act in a way like molecular machines (although this isn’t a perfect analogy.)
Ribosomes themselves are composed of a core of RNA and have about 2 dozen accessory proteins that provide structural support and/or modify it’s function in some way. Transfer RNA’s are purely RNA.
There are a few other known examples of “ribozymes” aside from the ribosome mechanism. Often, they exist as additional sections on RNA’s that don’t directly code for proteins. Instead they work to deactivate that RNA strand under certain conditions, and prevent the corresponding enzyme being produced by the ribosome.
This suggests that in the very distant past, most enzymes were composed of RNA instead of proteins.
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