Enzymes: Body Regulators

stopping point. In either case, the person would die due to his or her inability to breathe, eat, digest, or speak. In short, life as we know it would be impossible.

The enzymes' most important task is to initiate, halt, and accelerate various chemical reactions in the body. As the cells carry out their functions, the chemicals within them undergo certain reactions that require the presence of high temperatures to get started. But such high temperatures threaten and even kill cells. This is where enzymes become essential.

Enzymes, which undergo no chemical reactions themselves, initiate or accelerate chemical reactions without the need for high temperatures. For instance, the enzyme that cleans the carbon dioxide from our blood enables us to stay alive without suffocating. Known as "carbonic anhydrase," it speeds up the carbon dioxide cleansing process by 10 million times.(1) At this speed, enzymes cause changes in 36 million molecules a minute. (2)

How Do Enzymes Know What To Do?

Enzymes both accelerate vital reactions to the highest possible speed and also use the body's energy in the most economic manner. If we think of the human body as a factory and of the enzymes as the means of production, no source of energy could meet that factory's needs, for the amount of energy needed for the trillions of machines to work flawlessly would be very high. It follows, therefore, that in order to carry out a simple reaction, a cell needs a high temperature and a considerable amount of energy.

Yet the silently working enzymes fulfill their functions by using the energy they take from the body and its nutriments. This feature alone is sufficient to reveal that these are highly skilled personnel designed to make every reaction flawless and usable. At this very moment, many enzymes are controlling the reactions taking place throughout your body and bringing them up to a speed that allows your cells to stay alive.

Although a person is unaware of what is going on in his body, enzymes are both aware and make the most essential and timely interventions into all these processes. Moreover, every enzyme accelerates specific chemical reactions inside the body without any mistake, for each enzyme has been specially produced for its own task. For example, although many enzymes are effective in neutral liquid environments, those enzymes charged with digesting foodstuffs in the stomach can operate only in acidic environments.

Why Do Enzymes Only Initiate Specific Reactions?

All enzymes are compatible with the substances that they affect. They locate and adhere to a compatible substance in a most conscious manner, just like a key and a lock, within a complex three-dimensional geometry. Enzymes resemble hunters that, located throughout the body, wait for the appropriate substance. They are all in the correct place, well suited to their own design and properties, and avoid harmful environments or those that will render them ineffective. The way that they assume such responsibilities as initiating or accelerating all reactions requires separate consideration.

In the absence of any obstructive factor, enzymes initiate and accelerate all of the body's reactions. This leads to the excess production of a particular protein, for instance, or to the disruption of various balances inside the cell. Thus, the cell regulates the enzyme's activities by "deciding" that its activities need to be halted and then "distracting" the enzyme with extraordinary consciousness and planning. To do this, it sends a substance similar to that to which the enzyme normally attaches itself and thus prevents unnecessary activity for a certain amount of time. As this imitative substance needs to compete with the real substance to attract the enzyme, this process of obstructing the enzyme is known as "competitive inhibition." As a result, the enzyme's activities are temporarily halted until the product formed is reduced to a specific level.

Such phenomena cannot be glossed over in a single reading. First and foremost, recall that educated, conscious, and responsible human beings do not make the above calculations, take decisions, and put the plans into action; rather, all of this is done by proteins, fats, carbohydrates, and vitamins that consist of inanimate atoms. As if carrying out a stock control, the cell identifies how much of a particular substance it produces and, when it decides that enough has been produced, implements a most intelligent plan to prevent overproduction.

The cell's production of an imitative substance to distract the enzyme and its ability to send it just at the appropriate moment is a most conscious activity, for if these imitative substances were always present, they would hinder production at inappropriate times. However, cells also achieve perfect timing. Such behavior, which requires perfect organization, intelligence, and information, is performed by tiny molecules that are invisible to the naked eye, surely an indication of God's artistry in creation. Clearly, all of these entities act according to His commands.

Carbonic Anhydrase