How enzymes make the chemistry of life possible?

Question

biology

Answer 1

They are catalysts - they lower the activation energy of biological reactions.  This is important because many of these reactions would only be able to overcome the activation energy barrier at elevated temperatures - temperatures that would also decompose molecules that we don't want to react.  Enzymes selectively lower the activation energies of desired reactions (usually each enzyme catalyzes only one reaction), so that these reactions can occur while undesired ones do not.