Other forms: enzymes
An enzyme is a protein that makes a chemical reaction inside a living body happen fast enough to be any use. The enzymes in your spit start turning bread into sugar before you swallow it; the ones in washing powder pull grease off a shirt at thirty degrees.
An enzyme does one job on one kind of molecule, then comes out of the reaction unchanged and starts again — it is a tool, not an ingredient. Most enzyme names end in -ase: lactase splits milk sugar, amylase splits starch, protease splits protein. Heat and strong acid wreck them, and a boiled enzyme is finished for good, which is why a body holds its temperature so narrowly. People who cannot digest milk are short of a single enzyme, lactase. The adjective is enzymatic: an enzymatic reaction, an enzymatic cleaner.
1nounenzymeA protein made by living cells that speeds up one particular chemical reaction without being used up itself.
“Saliva contains an enzyme that begins breaking down starch.”
enzyme is a protein.
Enzyme is a made word with a birthday. The German physiologist Wilhelm Kühne coined Enzym in 1878, building it from two pieces of Ancient Greek, ἐν and ζύμη, and English took it straight from the German. Few science words can be dated to a single year and a single man.
German
Enzym
an unknown language
de
English, today
enzyme
Borrowed from an unknown language de. From German Enzym, coined 1878 by the German physiologist Wilhelm Kühne from Ancient Greek - ἐν + ζύμη. by surface analysis, en- + zyme.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA