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Enzymes are responsible for the chemical reactions that enable all forms of life. Whether it’s the archaea living in hot springs, the bacteria deep in our soil, the plants harnessing energy from the sun or all animals, including us humans, we are all united in our reliance on enzymes. 

Understanding enzymatic chemistry enables us to tackle critical health and environmental problems, such as designing new therapeutics for diseases or using unique enzymatic capabilities for bioremediation. However, we have only skimmed the surface of learning the full scope of chemical reactions that are enzymatically catalyzed, the mysterious and intricate mechanisms that can be performed, and the dynamic motions enzymes undergo to accomplish their chemical tasks.

The presentations in this session will cover many exciting developments in enzymology, including recently discovered enzymatic functions, evidence for trapping long-anticipated enzymatic intermediates, insight into how various cofactors can enable unique reactions, and cutting-edge experimental approaches enabling us to understand better how enzymes dynamically function. There’s still a whole lot to learn about how enzymes get their jobs done. 

Keywords: enzymes, enzyme mechanisms, structural biology, biochemistry, radical SAM enzymes, metalloenzymes, natural product biosynthesis

Who should attend: all who are fascinated by how enzymes can use some newly discovered tricks, handy cofactors and dynamic movements to carry out their chemistry

Theme song: “This is How We Do It” by Montell Jordan

This session is powered proteins, cofactors and coffee.

Learn more

Check out all ten thematic symposia planned for the 2022 ASBMB annual meeting:

• Diversity, equity and inclusion
• Protein machines and disorder
• Signaling
• Quality control in organelles
• Metabolism
• Enzymology
• RNA/DNA
• Membranes/lipids
• Glycobiology
• Education and professional development