One of the simple things that my secondary school biology failed to explain was enzymes. They were presented as these mythical entities that magically reduce the energy requirements of certain reactions, using a clumsy key/lock metaphor that didn’t really explain anything.
It was much later in my 30s after buying a book on cellular biology that I learnt that enzymes work by using electro-static forces to bend target molecules to increase their probability of breaking at lower energies. It’s this pattern of +ve and -ve charges on the enzyme that matches the target molecule and provides the basis of the key/lock metaphor.
This realisation was so beautiful, astonishing and illuminating that I can’t for the life of me understand why it was left out, particularly as we were learning about the physics and chemistry of the related concepts anyway.
It was much later in my 30s after buying a book on cellular biology that I learnt that enzymes work by using electro-static forces to bend target molecules to increase their probability of breaking at lower energies. It’s this pattern of +ve and -ve charges on the enzyme that matches the target molecule and provides the basis of the key/lock metaphor.
This realisation was so beautiful, astonishing and illuminating that I can’t for the life of me understand why it was left out, particularly as we were learning about the physics and chemistry of the related concepts anyway.