Enzyme Action
Enzymes are biological catalysts that play an important role in many biochemical reactions.
Because of this, enzymes are increasingly being studied as potential targets for treating certain
diseases. Cancer is one type of disease that might be a particularly good candidate for the
development of drugs that target enzymes, particularly the enzyme telomerase. This enzyme
plays an important role in cell division by protecting the ends of chromosomes during the
chromosome replication process. Telomerase is usually present in stem cells but is normally
absent or found only in low concentrations in somatic cells. In cancer cells, however,
telomerase may play an important role in allowing for the uncontrolled division of abnormal cells,
which characterizes the various types of cancer. Since cancer is characterized by uncontrolled
growth and division of abnormal cells and the formation of new cells, one treatment approach is
to target enzymes involved in cell division (for background information about telomerase, see
this article in Scientific American). Recently, a group of researchers
1
identified a key aspect of
the structure of telomerase. The researchers hope that by better understanding the structure of
this enzyme, their findings might lead the way to the development of a drug that targets the
enzyme and thereby helps advance cancer treatment.
As a research assistant at a pharmaceutical company, you are part of a research group that
focuses on developing drugs that target enzymes. Your group is thus particularly excited about
the findings from this study and in the possibility of developing drugs that might target
telomerase. The leader of your research group wants to send a summary of the findings from
this article to the Head of Drug Discovery at your company. To do this, he asks you to write a
short summary that describes the importance of the enzyme telomerase as well as discusses
the key findings from this study. As part of your summary, you will need to define enzymes and
then both describe the importance of enzymes in biochemical reactions as well as discuss the
way in which enzymes can inhibit or accelerate chemical reactions. You should also discuss the
ways in which the structure of enzymes affects their activity and how drugs could be developed
to interfere with enzymes to alter their activity. You can then end your summary with a
description about the importance of the research findings reported in this article.
Items to keep in mind:
• When we read your memo, we will act as the Head of Drug Discovery at your company
and will have adequate scientific knowledge about biology, but will likely not remember
all of the specifics about enzymes and enzyme reactions.
• External references are not required, but if they are used, they should be cited using
MLA citation style format.
• Since you are trying to impress your boss and establish your credibility as a research
assistant, you should take care to carefully edit and proofread your memo.
• The memo should be between 400-500 words in length.
1
Linnea I Jansson, Ben M Akiyama, Alexandra Ooms, Cheng Lu, Seth M Rubin, Michael D Stone.
Structural basis of template-boundary definition in Tetrahymena telomerase. Nature Structural
& Molecular Biology, 2015; DOI: 10.1038/nsmb.3101 also see
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151005120917.htm
