Epimerases and racemases are isomerase

Isomerase

In biochemistry, an isomerase is an enzyme that catalyzes the structural rearrangement of isomers. Isomerases thus catalyze reactions of the formwhere B is an isomer of A.-Nomenclature:...

 enzyme

Enzyme

Enzymes are proteins that catalyze chemical reactions. In enzymatic reactions, the molecules at the beginning of the process, called substrates, are converted into different molecules, called products. Almost all chemical reactions in a biological cell need enzymes in order to occur at rates...

s that catalyze the inversion of stereochemistry

Stereochemistry

Stereochemistry, a subdiscipline of chemistry, involves the study of the relative spatial arrangement of atoms within molecules. An important branch of stereochemistry is the study of chiral molecules....

 in biological molecules.
Racemases catalyze the stereochemical inversion around the asymmetric carbon atom in a substrate having only one center of asymmetry. Epimerases catalyze the stereochemical inversion of the configuration about an asymmetric carbon atom in a substrate having more than one center of asymmetry, thus interconverting epimer

Epimer

In chemistry, epimers are diastereomers that differ in configuration of only one stereogenic center. Diastereomers are a class of stereoisomers that are non-superposable, non-mirror images of one another....

s.

External links

• http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/racemase
• http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/epimerase