Question

What is severo Ochoa enzyme and what is its function?

Answer 1

Enzymes are biological polymers that catalyze biochemical reactions. The majority of enzymes are proteins with catalytic capabilities that are required to perform various processes. A set of enzymes that are required to sustain life performs metabolic processes and other chemical reactions in the cell.

Complete answer:
Severo Ochoa de Albornoz was a Spanish physician and biochemist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Arthur Kornberg in 1959 while working on high-energy phosphates.
Polynucleotide phosphorylase was the name he gave the enzyme he discovered. It was later discovered that the enzyme's function is to degrade RNA rather than synthesize it; however, under test-tube conditions, it runs its natural reaction in reverse.

The enzyme's function is to disassemble the long RNA chain that begins at the 3'end and moves towards the 5'end. The enzyme has been extremely useful in helping scientists understand and recreate the process by which hereditary information contained in genes is translated into enzymes that determine the functions and character of each cell via RNA intermediaries.

Note: Polynucleotide phosphorylase, discovered by Severo Ochoa, was first isolated from the bacterium Azotobacter vinelandii. The enzyme creates RNA from ribonucleotide triphosphates and is essential in deciphering the genetic code. This enzyme has an interesting phenomenon in that it was an RNA degrading enzyme in test tube conditions but constructs RNA inside an organism.