There are many reasons why enzymes have such a high specificity. The first variable is an enzyme's primary structure. A primary structure is just a combination of amino acids. There are twenty different amino acids that the primary structure can be created from. Every enzyme has a different order that the acids are placed in and each one has a different number or amino acids. The slightest change in this structure can affect a protein's …showed first 75 words of 658 total…

…showed last 75 words of 658 total…enzyme changes its shape slightly in order to grasp the substrate. This is related to how a baseball glove wraps around the ball in order to hold it in tight. The example below shows how the enzyme sucrase will break up sucrose but not lactose due to the shape of the substrate and active site. This sums up how the structural organization within proteins are responsible the specificity of an enzyme breaking down a substrate