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The two important properties of enzyme kinetics are how easily the enzyme can be saturated with a substrate, and the maximum rate it can achieve. Knowing these properties suggests what an enzyme might do in the cell and can show how the enzyme will respond to changes in these conditions.
Enzymes act on small molecules called substrates, which an enzyme converts into products. Almost all metabolic processes in the cell need enzyme catalysis in order to occur at rates fast enough to sustain life. The study of how fast an enzyme can transform a substrate into a product is called enzyme kinetics.
A decade before Michaelis and Menten, Victor Henri found that enzyme reactions could be explained by assuming a binding interaction between the enzyme and the substrate. [11] His work was taken up by Michaelis and Menten, who investigated the kinetics of invertase, an enzyme that catalyzes the hydrolysis of sucrose into glucose and fructose. [12]
Substrate inhibition is also closely related to enzyme kinetics which is commonly modeled by the Michaelis–Menten equation. If an enzyme that is part of a rate-limiting step of microbial growth is substrate inhibited, then the cell growth will be inhibited in the same manner.
The Michaelis–Menten Model can be an invaluable tool to understanding enzyme kinetics. According to this model, a plot of the reaction velocity (V 0 ) associated with the concentration [S] of the substrate can then be used to determine values such as V max , initial velocity, and K m (V max /2 or affinity of enzyme to substrate complex).
The rate of the enzyme-catalysed reaction is limited by diffusion and so the enzyme 'processes' the substrate well before it encounters another molecule. [1] Some enzymes operate with kinetics which are faster than diffusion rates, which would seem to be impossible. Several mechanisms have been invoked to explain this phenomenon.
An individual cell contains thousands of different kinds of small molecules, such as sugars, lipids, and amino acids. The interconversion of these molecules is carried out by catalysts called enzymes. For example, the most widely studied bacterium, E. coli strain K-12, is able to produce about 2,338 metabolic enzymes. [1]
If the enzyme is irreversible the equation turns into the simple Michaelis-Menten equation that is irreversible. When setting the equilibrium constant to infinity, the equation can be seen to revert to the simpler case where the product inhibits the reverse step. A comparison has been made between the MWC and reversible Hill equation. [9]