Nature’s subway: Do enzymes use tunnelling to take a shortcut?

Abstract

Enzymes are complex, highly efficient natural catalysts – i.e. substances that are able to greatly accelerate the rate of a chemical reaction. Understanding how they have evolved and the features they possess to do so has wide-ranging beneficial implications for different activities in modern chemistry, such as pharmaceutical development, the prediction of drug metabolism, or the design of new synthetic or biomimetic catalysts.