Hydratase

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An enzyme that catalyzes the addition of water molecules to chemical compounds, facilitating hydration reactions essential in various metabolic pathways
2. A biological catalyst responsible for incorporating water into substrates during chemical transformations, playing a vital role in metabolism and biochemical processes
3. A protein that accelerates hydration reactions by enabling water to combine with specific substrates, crucial for numerous physiological and metabolic functions

Etymology: Hydratase is a deliberately built word: it combines "hydrate", a chemist's term for a compound that has taken up water, with the suffix "-ase", the standard ending for enzymes. The "-ase" itself was carved out of "diastase", the first enzyme ever identified. That name comes from Greek "diastasis", meaning "separation", reflecting the way the substance was thought to loosen starch apart. The "hydrate" part traces back to Greek "hydor", "water", which also gives us "hydra" and "hydrology". Its path into chemistry ran through French, where "hydrate" entered the vocabulary of chemists before English adopted it, and English then used the same base to form "hydrate" as a verb for the act of adding water. Hydratase therefore reads literally as "water-adder", a name that describes exactly what the enzyme does: it attaches a molecule of water to another substance.

Synonyms: enzyme, catalyst, hydrase, dehydratase