タンパク質を主体とする高分子化合物で生物の細胞内で合成される酵素は、生命の営みを可能にする驚くべき極小の分子機械です。そのひとつひとつがDNAの作成から食物の消化まで、生体内で単一の化学反応を触媒します。なぜ、どのように触媒作用を発揮するのか解説し、X線結晶構造解析で酵素分子の立体構造が特定できるようになるまでの酵素研究の道のりを概括します。酵素の働きが関係する疾病、医学分野での活用、食品、日用品、ゴミ処理、化学合成など幅広い利用にも目を向けます。
    

• Explains what enzymes are, what they do and how they do it
• Considers the role of enzymes both in our bodies and cells, and also as tools in washing powders, food production, waste treatment, and chemical synthesis
• Describes contemporary applications of cloned enzymes for a multitude of industrial and medical uses

  
Enzymes are the astonishing, tiny molecular machines that make life possible. Each one of these small proteins speeds up a single chemical reaction inside a living organism many millionfold. Working together, teams of enzymes carry out all the processes that collectively we recognise as life, from making DNA to digesting food.
  
This Very Short Introduction explains the why and the how of speeding up these reactions - catalysis - before going on to reveal how we have evolved these catalysts of such extraordinary power and exquisite selectivity. Paul Engel shows how X-ray crystallography has revealed the complex molecular shapes that allow enzymes to function at an extraordinarily sophisticated level. He also examines medical aspects of enzymes, both in the way faulty enzymes cause disease and in the way enzymes can be used for diagnosis and therapy. Finally, he looks at the many varied ways in which individual enzymes, taken out of their biological context, are used nowadays as tools - in washing powders, food production, waste treatment, and chemical synthesis.