hydrolizie

Hydrolysis, also called hydrolyze, is a chemical reaction in which a molecule is cleaved into two parts by reaction with water. In hydrolysis, water provides a hydrogen atom to one fragment and a hydroxyl group to the other, breaking a covalent bond such as an ester, amide, glycosidic linkage, or phosphodiester bond. The reaction can be catalyzed by acids or bases or accelerated by enzymes known as hydrolases.

Acid-catalyzed hydrolysis involves protonation of the target bond, increasing its susceptibility to nucleophilic attack by water. Base-catalyzed hydrolysis, or saponification, uses hydroxide to attack the carbonyl carbon, yielding a carboxylate and an alcohol. Enzymatic hydrolysis occurs under mild, physiological conditions with high specificity; examples include proteases cleaving peptide bonds, amylases breaking down starch, lipases hydrolyzing fats, glycosidases splitting glycosidic bonds, and nucleases cleaving nucleic acids.

Common examples include the hydrolysis of esters to carboxylic acids (or carboxylates) and alcohols, hydrolysis of starch by amylases to shorter sugars, and hydrolysis of proteins to peptides and amino acids. In biology, hydrolysis is essential for digestion, metabolism, and turnover of polymers, while in chemistry it is used to break down esters, acetals, and phosphodiesters, and to convert polymers back to monomers.

Hydrolysis rates depend on pH, temperature, and catalysts; reactions may be rapid under acidic or basic conditions or highly specific when catalyzed by enzymes at ambient temperatures. The concept is widely applied in biochemistry, pharmacology, environmental science, and industrial chemistry.