Enzymes: Biological Catalysts
Students will understand enzymes as biological catalysts and investigate factors affecting their activity, such as temperature and pH.
About This Topic
Students will understand enzymes as biological catalysts and investigate factors affecting their activity, such as temperature and pH.
Key Questions
- Critically evaluate the Michaelis-Menten kinetic model, interpreting Km and kcat as quantitative measures of enzyme-substrate affinity and catalytic efficiency, and assess the model's limitations under non-steady-state physiological conditions.
- Analyse the molecular mechanisms of competitive, non-competitive, and allosteric inhibition, evaluating how each mechanism is exploited in the rational design of drugs that modulate metabolic pathways.
- Assess the transition-state stabilisation theory of enzyme catalysis against the induced-fit model, evaluating evidence from site-directed mutagenesis studies that distinguishes their relative contributions to catalytic rate enhancement.
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