Question
Question: From what you have learnt, can you tell whether enzymes are bigger or DNA is bigger in molecular siz...
From what you have learnt, can you tell whether enzymes are bigger or DNA is bigger in molecular size? How did you know?
Solution
Enzymes are proteinaceous in nature. Protein is made by amino acids. Amino acids are attached with peptide bonds and peptide chains are made. Many peptide chains form polypeptide chains. Polypeptide chains are arranged in a specific manner and form the protein.
DNA is a polymer of nucleotides. The nucleotide is made by a Nitrogenous-base, pentose sugar, and phosphate group. Many nucleotides are joined by phospho-di-ester bonds and a polynucleotide chain is made.
Complete step by step answer: Enzymes and DNA both have high molecular weight. DNA is our genetic material. Enzymes act as catalysts for biological reactions. It increases the rate of biological reactions. DNA carries our genetic information. The size of DNA is different in different organisms. The length of the DNA molecule depends on the number of pairs of nitrogen bases. If we take an example of bacteria E.coli it has more than 9000000 base pairs.
The enzymes are made by proteins and proteins are made by amino acids. The average number of amino acids in enzymes is 100-1000. So, on the basis of the number of amino acids in the protein and the number of nitrogen-based we can conclude that the molecular size of DNA is much more than protein.
We can also conclude that DNA is bigger than enzymes on the basis of the concept that small DNA segments that are called genes are provided for protein synthesis. DNA synthesizes m-RNA and m-RNA provides a template for peptide chain synthesis. These peptides are later modified into enzymes. So this enzyme must be smaller than DNA because it is synthesized from a small segment of DNA.
So the correct answer is DNA.
Note: DNA is a double-stranded molecule. Its structure model was given by Watson and crick.
Enzyme word was given by ‘Kuhne’. These are colloidal in nature. Enzymes have an active site that provides a surface to bind with substrate molecules.