What If There Were No Enzymes?

What if...? #1

Which biology enthusiast is unaware of biocatalysts? These (mostly) proteinaceous molecules are secreted inside or outside of our cells and catalyse numerous biochemical reactions. From the DNA helicase which is required for the unwinding of DNA during its replication, to pepsin which is required to digest protein enzymes are everywhere. But what life would have been like if there were no enzymes?

 One human cell produces approximately 1300 enzymes. These can combine with coenzymes and/or substrates to form nearly 100,000 various chemicals that help us see, hear, move, feel, digest food and yes, to think. Each and every organ, tissue and all the 100 trillion cells in our body depend upon the reactions of metabolic enzymes and their energy factor. 

Enzymes enhance the rate of our life's reactions to such an extent that they're accomplished within milliseconds. Carbonic anhydrase-the fastest enzyme in our body-can hydrate 10⁴ to 10⁶ carbon dioxide molecules per second. So basically without enzymes, life reactions are going to take way too much time. 

One “building block” reaction in your body which is of transcription of DNA to RNA will take nearly 78 million years! Waiting this long won't be much convenient for us as we look at our normal life-span. Simple digestion of food would've taken 2.3 billion years to complete which is equal to about half the age of the Earth! But when the enzymes enter the room, the rate of reaction increases by a factor equivalent to the difference between the diameter of a bacterial cell and the distance from the Earth to the sun. 

Without the enzymes, our cells may try to seek other pathways to fulfill its energy needs on time as our cells have been cheating the time since ages while producing ATP energy. If the required products (whose list starts from ATP itself) aren't provided to cell on time, they start to starve and die. It is estimated that each cell produces and consumes 10,000,000 ATP molecules every second and only way to get this much ATPs every second goes along with enzymes! 

So the bottom line,

What life without enzyme? 

These enzymes have their recipes written in our deoxyribonucleic acid i.e. DNA, but what would've happend if our deoxyribonucleic acid was deoxyribonucleic base? 

Well that remains a question for another

What if...?