His recent work answered those questions with a resounding yes. Earlier this year, Stack and his colleagues reported in the journal Science that they have designed, synthesized and characterized a molecule that looks like an enzyme and acts like an enzyme but is a fraction of its size. This catalyst is one of only a handful of working models of enzymes created to date. In this case, smaller is better because small molecules, like Stack's creation, are inherently easier to study than large ones, like enzymes. The model enzyme even may have industrial potential because it is easy to work with and it catalyzes an important organic reaction without making polluting byproducts.
Enzymes play a crucial role in life's chemistry.
They speed chemical reactions, coming away unchanged and ready to start again. Enzymes catalyze such reactions as the breakdown of the air's nitrogen, an important plant nutrient, into a form that plants can use. Other enzymes catalyze the transformation of starch to sugar, and still others regulate protein synthesis in the body. One of the obstacles to understanding enzymes is their large size. Each enzyme comprises thousands of atoms, with various sections of an enzyme performing different functions.