The New Student's Reference Work/Enzymes

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See also Enzyme on Wikipedia, and the disclaimer.

En′zymes (often called soluble ferments), substances of unknown but very complex composition produced in plants and animals for digesting insoluble foods or those which cannot be used readily without such change. The changes they produce are of two sorts: (1) the commoner consists in causing the food to take into its composition an additional molecule of water; (2) without any additions it may be split up into two or more compounds. Enzyme itself does not take part in the chemical reaction, but seems to act only by its presence. Consequently a very small amount of an enzyme may digest large quantities of a food. Each enzyme is restricted in its action to a particular substance. Some of the more important enzymes, the substance on which they act and the chief products are shown in the following table:


ENZYME SUBS. ON
 WHICH IT ACTS 
PRODUCT

Diastase   Starch  Malt-Sugar
Ptyalin  Starch  A sugar
Cytase  Cellulose  A sugar
Invertase   Cane-Sugar   Grape-Sugar and
 Fruit-Sugar =
 “invert sugar”
Maltase  Malt-Sugar   Grape-Sugar
Imulase  Inulin  Fruit-Sugar
Emulsin  Glucosides  Glucose, etc.
Pepsin  Proteids  Peptones
Trypsia  Proteids  Amides
Lipase  Fats  Glycerin, fatty acids
Zymase  Sugars  Alcohol, carbon dioxid