So now that we know that enzymes are catalysts and they speed up chemical reactions to make those reactions go faster, in this video, we're going to introduce some of the functions of enzymes. It turns out that enzymes actually have a wide variety of functions in living cells. We're not going to talk about all of the different functions that enzymes can have, but some of those functions include the following three functions that we're showing you down below. The first is going to be building proteins. Enzymes are involved with building proteins and making sure that proteins are built at a fast rate.
You can see here that the enzyme is this little choo choo looking train here, and this choo choo looking train here is an enzyme that's called a ribosome, which is specifically going to be used to build proteins using messenger RNA. We'll be able to talk about this process of building proteins later in our course. But for now, what you can see here is that enzymes are involved with building proteins. This here represents the enzyme and it's building this protein that you see here. Enzymes are also really important for copying DNA. You can see in this image that the DNA is being copied or duplicated so that there are two copies of the DNA.
This is something that enzymes are involved with and help to make sure that this process occurs at a fast enough rate. Last but not least, enzymes are also involved with the digestion of food. When we eat our foods, enzymes are involved with breaking down the foods that are in our stomachs. You can see over here, this represents a picture of our stomachs, and the food that is in our stomachs is going to be broken down using enzymes, and enzymes speed up the reactions that break down the foods we digest. This here concludes our brief introduction to some of the functions that enzymes have, but the idea is that they are going to speed up chemical reactions and are involved with a wide variety of functions in living cells.
I'll be able to see you guys in our next video.