Question: How many types of enzymes are there and can you name them?

Jimi Wills answered on 18 Mar 2016:

enzymes can be categorised in different ways…

by what they do… for example:

transaminases
deacetylases
kinases
phosphatases
polymerases
etc
I’m not going to name them all because there are literally hundreds…

there are some over-all groupings… e.g.
transaminases belong to the transferases – they take a chemical group from one molecule and transfer it to another
polymerases belong to the ligases – they stick molecules together
– the opposite of these are hydrolases, e.g. the class of endonucleases are types of hydrolases

other classes include isomerases, that change the shapes of molecules, oxidase/reductases that add or remove protons from a molecule or system

You could also view active membrane channels, which pump molecules in or out of cells, as enzymatic… well they are anyway, because they breakdown ATP (the energy molecules) to get the enegery for pumping, but they usually one member of the channel (which can be made of several proteins) affects the shape of the whole channel… this is not formally an enzymatic reaction though.