Metabolites, enzymes, and metabolite analogues

Abstract

The smallest change in the chemical constitution of a selectively toxic agent often makes an enormous change in its biological activity, and many examples of this have been given in Chapter 2. The present chapter deals in greater detail with one cause of high specificity, namely a close resemblance between (a) the normal substrate (or coenzyme) of an enzyme and (b) an agent which inhibits it. In biochemical nomenclature, the substrate, the precursors of coenzymes, and the products of enzymes are referred to collectively as metabolites ^⋆.