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Enzyme Activity: History
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Contributor: Yu Peng

Enzyme activity is the measurable rate at which an enzyme catalyzes the conversion of substrate molecules into reaction products under specified experimental or cellular conditions. It represents the amount of chemical transformation occurring per unit time and depends on the concentration of catalytically competent enzyme, substrate availability, temperature, pH, ionic composition, cofactors, and the concentrations of products and regulatory molecules [1][2]. In kinetic analysis, activity is commonly quantified as an initial reaction velocity, determined while substrate depletion and product accumulation remain limited. For enzymes following a steady-state single-substrate mechanism, the relationship between initial velocity and substrate concentration is described by the Michaelis–Menten equation, whose parameters include the maximal velocity (V<sub>max</sub>) and the Michaelis constant (K<sub>M</sub>) [1][3]. Catalytic turnover is expressed by k<sub>cat</sub>, the number of substrate molecules converted per active site per unit time under saturating substrate conditions [2]. Enzyme activity also encompasses changes in catalytic rate produced by reversible inhibitors, irreversible inactivators, allosteric effectors, covalent modification, and substrate or product binding [2][4].

  • enzyme kinetics
  • catalytic rate
  • Michaelis–Menten kinetics
  • enzyme inhibition

🔵 Enzyme function and inhibition • 🟣 Molecular Biology • 🟡 Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology • 🔴 Life Sciences

References

  1. George Edward Briggs; John Burdon Sanderson Haldane; A Note on the Kinetics of Enzyme Action. Biochem. J. 1925, 19, 338-339, 10.1042/bj0190338.
  2. Kenneth A. Johnson; Roger S. Goody; The Original Michaelis Constant: Translation of the 1913 Michaelis–Menten Paper. Biochemistry 2011, 50, 8264-8269, 10.1021/bi201284u.
  3. Athel Cornish-Bowden; One hundred years of Michaelis–Menten kinetics. Perspect. Sci. 2015, 4, 3-9, 10.1016/j.pisc.2014.12.002.
  4. Patrick Masson; Aliya R. Mukhametgalieva; Partial Reversible Inhibition of Enzymes and Its Metabolic and Pharmaco-Toxicological Implications. Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2023, 24, 12973, 10.3390/ijms241612973.
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