Answer to Question #26375 in Biochemistry for nazrein

Question

many proteins are denatured by temperatures exceeding 44 °C(112 °f).explain how this characteristic of proteins related to the danger of an unusually high fever.

Answer 1

Temperature optimum of most proteins is 38 °C, so temperature increase leads to the rising of entropy ( the degree of disorder of molecules) which causes expansion of distance between molecules and break down of hydrogen bonds, disulfide bridges, hydrophobic and van der Waals interactions. So the proteins loose theirs native structure and denaturate to the secondary or even to the primary structure which are more energetically advantageous. Most of proteins are not able to perfom their specific functions in such conformations. So most proteins become inactive at high temperature, excluding DNA polymerase Taq, which can operate at 95 °C