Enzyme Catalytic Power Minireview Series

One of the great remaining unsolved questions in biological chemistry is the nature of enzyme catalysis. In the mid-twentieth century, several key questions drove biomedical research: the genetic code, the protein folding problem, and the nature of enzymatic catalysis. The code was, of course, solved, and great progress has been made with protein folding (1-3). However, enzyme catalytic efficiency is still hotly debated with new ideas or viewpoints emerging and old ideas being repackaged in an attempt to finally understand these biocatalysts.