Steady-state kinetics

All of chemical kinetics is based on rate equations, but this is especially true of steady-state enzyme kinetics: in other applications a rate equation can be regarded as a differential equation that has to be integrated to give the function of real interest, whereas in steady-state enzyme kinetics it is used as it stands. Although the early enzymologists tried to follow the usual chemical practice of deriving equations that describe the state of reaction as a function of time there were too many complications, such as loss of enzyme activity, effects of accumulating product etc., for this to be a fruitful approach. Rapid progress only became possible when Michaelis and Menten (1) realized that most of the complications could be removed by extrapolating back to zero time and regarding the measured initial rate as the primary observation. Since then, of course, accumulating knowledge has made it possible to study time courses directly, and this has led to two additional subdisciplines of enzyme kinetics, transient-state kinetics, which deals with the time regime before a steady state is established, and progress-curve analysis, which deals with the slow approach to equilibrium during the steady-state phase. The former of these has achieved great importance but is regarded as more specialized. It is dealt with in later chapters of this book. Progress-curve analysis has never recovered the importance that it had at the beginning of the twentieth century. Nearly all steps that form parts of the mechanisms of enzyme-catalysed reactions involve reactions of a single molecule, in which case they typically follow first-order kinetics: . . . v = ka . . . . . . 1 . . . or they involve two molecules (usually but not necessarily different from one another) and typically follow second-order kinetics: . . . v = kab . . . . . . 2 . . . In both cases v represents the rate of reaction, and a and b are the concentrations of the molecules involved, and k is a rate constant. Because we shall be regarding the rate as a quantity in its own right it is not usual in steady-state kinetics to represent it as a derivative such as -da/dt.