Question

Enzymes were discovered for the first time in which of the following organisms?
A. Yeast
B. Maize
C. Bacteria
D. Algae

Answer 1

Hint: The biochemical reactions occurring within the body are catalyzed by globular proteins called enzymes. They only act by catalyzing the chemical reaction and do not undergo any changes themselves. A particular reaction and substrate have a specific enzyme. The enzymes are named based on the reaction or compound they participate in. Enzymes are often termed as biocatalysts. For instance, the hydrolysis of maltose to glucose is catalyzed by the enzyme maltase.

Complete answer:
Diastase was the first enzyme to be discovered. It was discovered by the French chemist Anselme Payen in the year 1833. By the early 18th century, it was known that plant extracts could convert starch to sugar and that stomach secretion assisted in the digestion of meat. But their exact mechanism was unknown. That is up until then enzymes were not discovered and classified.
Decades after the diastase enzyme was discovered, Louis Pasteur during his study of fermentation of sugar to alcohol with the help of yeast, concluded that yeast cells had vital constituents that facilitated fermentation and called them “Ferments”. These ferments were believed to have only functioned within living organisms. Louis Pasteur quoted that “alcoholic fermentation is an act correlated with the life and organization of the yeast cells, not with the death or putrefaction of the cells”. Wilhelm Kühne, a German physiologist, was the first person to use the term “enzyme” in the year 1877 to describe the fermentation process. Eduard Buchner conducted a series of experiments on yeast extracts at the University of Berlin. He discovered that the yeast extracts were able to ferment sugar even with the absence of living yeast cells in the mixture. He named the enzyme “zymase” which was responsible for the sucrose fermentation. He submitted his first paper elaborating on his experiment and its results in the year 1897. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in the year 1907, for his cell-free fermentation discovery. On the basis of this information, one can conclude that enzymes were first discovered from the microorganism yeast.
Therefore the correct option is A, i.e., yeast

Note: The chemical activity produced by living organisms was later referred to as ferment and the word enzyme was associated with non-living substances such as pepsin. Enzymes are believed to decrease the activation energy’s magnitude.