What's the diffrence between an enzyme, a hormone, and a proteine??

[hitmankratos]

Silly question, I know. But I just have to know...and they just don't teach us this stuff at school...

[Arejang]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe hormones are chemical signalling mechanisms

 

Enzymes allow reactions, which under normal conditions would go extremely slow, to speed up by lowering their activation energy (imagine going up a really steep hill in order to get to the other side, then someone comes along and just cuts the hill in half, now you can get to the other side much quicker).

 

Proteins...lol, gosh it's hard to say since it's kind of a broad question. I guess anything results from DNA transcription to mRNA translation would be a protein, which is just about everything, heheh.

 

I hope this helped some

[ecoli]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe hormones are chemical signalling mechanisms

Pretty much, yes. Hormones are usually protein molecules or steroids ( a class of lipids).

 

Enzymes allow reactions, which under normal conditions would go extremely slow, to speed up by lowering their activation energy (imagine going up a really steep hill in order to get to the other side, then someone comes along and just cuts the hill in half, now you can get to the other side much quicker).

Right again... the term for this is a 'catalyst'

Biological enzymes are usually proteins, but we're finding more and more RNA molecules that also act as enzymes (especially involved in protein translation).

 

Proteins...lol, gosh it's hard to say since it's kind of a broad question. I guess anything results from DNA transcription to mRNA translation would be a protein, which is just about everything, heheh.

 

Not quite right on this one.

 

A protein is made up of multiple amino acids connected by peptide bonds. Due to the different side chains in amino acids, this gives the proteins complex primary, secondary, tertiary and [sometimes even] quaternary structure. Generally, in order to qualify as a protein, I believe the molecule must consist of >20 amino acids (or it's just labelled a polypeptide).

 

Protein function is diverse, from enzymes or hormones (as seen above) but also to provide structural support and to package other molecules (etc). Proteins are, in general, the ultimate result of the DNA expression.

 

DNA transcription results in the production of mRNA, which is translated into proteins. (so the first part of your statement was incorrect).

 

Proteins are a very specific class of molecule; they are made up of only Amino acids, but since there are biological 20 amino acids, which can be arranged in theoretically any order, proteins wind up having a wide range of diverse functions, based on the resulting secondary and tertiary structures.

 

Also, post-translational modification of proteins can result in altering or controlling their function.

 

 

This area of biology can wind up getting pretty complex pretty quickly... did you want to know anything else?