Enzymes

For living organisms to survive, they need to carry out chemical reactions, which are often very slow, so to speed them up we normally apply heat to quicken the reaction.

Now, using heat has its side effects. If we use too much heat, the cells might get damaged, and it might also speed up reactions that we don't want.

In chemical and biological applications, Catalysts are substances that increase the rate that something happens and are not used up or changed,
Enzymes are biological catalysts made by living organisms. They are proteins, which are long chains of amino acids that can bend and fold, making them unique.

Enzymes work by taking a large structure, which we call a substrate, and breaking it down into smaller structures named products.
They can also do it in reverse, where they convert products into structures.

They also have a special region in them, which they can specify what they want to catalyze, and if the substrate doesn't match the catalysts, then it won't help catalyze the substrate.

There are two ways scientists thought it worked one way is the lock and key model, and then the induced fit model.
Before we figured out the induced fit model, we thought the catalyst needed to fit perfectly to the substrate being a 100% perfect match both ways, similar to what a lock and key is where the key has to be the same in order for the lock to open.

We do know now what the Enzyme will slightly reshape itself in order to help the substrate fit better, the Enzyme 'compliments' the substrate by fitting better,