Deactivation-disguised kinetics
Abstract Some complex enzyme deactivations may appear to be first order. Criteria, examples, and counter-examples (the ‘normal’ situation), are presented for deactivation disguise exhibited during the modeling of enzyme deactivations by a series mechanism. Deactivation disguise may be exhibited if the ratio of the deactivation velocity constants in the series mechanism, k 2 / k 1 equals 1 — α 1 . Here α 1 is the ratio of the specific activities of the intermediate state and the initial enzyme state. Even though the disguised ‘kinetics of deactivation’ occur by mere coincidence and for very specialized kinetics, care does need to be exercised in examining enzyme deactivation kinetics that appears to be first order and is in reality more complex. A simple procedure to check if the disguised ‘kinetics of deactivation’ is a mere coincidence or not is presented.