Question

What are the types of specificity?

Answer 1

The above question refers to the enzyme specificity. As it is clear from the word specific, it means that enzymes only catalyze only one or a particular type of reaction and not the other one. There are four types of enzyme specificity.

Complete answer:
Enzymes are the proteins that act as biological catalysts. They accelerate the chemical reactions. The molecules upon which enzymes may act are called substrates, and enzymes convert the substrates into different molecules known as products.
While catalyzing the reaction enzymes shows the tendency for a specific type of chemical reaction, this is termed as enzyme specificity. In other words we can say that an enzyme should resistivity in its choice of substrates.
There are four types of specificity. These are-
-Absolute specificity- This means that the enzyme will act on only one specific substrate. As the name suggests, it will exclusively catalyze only one reaction.
-Group selectivity- Here group refers to a functional group, so it will catalyze a reaction on a functional group
-Linkage specificity- It means that regardless of the type of molecular structure, the enzyme will act on a particular type of chemical bond.
-Stereochemical specificity- It means that the enzyme will act on a particular optical or stereochemical isomer or an enantiomer.

Note:
Enzyme specificity depends upon the active site orientation based on its atomic configuration. Bond breaking and forming reacting groups are in the active site of the enzyme. This active site takes up a relatively small part of the total volume of an enzyme.