MathBench > Cellular Processes

Enzyme Kinetics

Part I: Using intuition to think about the shape of the graph

In this module, I'm going to do something a little different. Essentially, I'm going to try to lead you through the process that I, personally, use to explore a new mathematical situation or a new equation. The situation is enzyme kinetics -- that is, figuring out how fast a product will be produced in the presence of the substrate and the enzyme. The equation is called, "the Michaelis Menten equation", and it's one of the most important equations on all of biology.

It's also a very strange looking beast.

To begin with, we want to get a sense of what this beast looks like. We'll do this in an intuitive way, by thinking about the process itself, and what sort of graph to expect. Then in the second part of this module, I'll show foxhuntyou the equation itself and we'll go through a series of steps to explore how this equation works. In the third part of this module, we'll look at how an experimenter can determine the values of the parameters involved in the equation. Finally, we'll put it all together with some practical applications.

So, onwards to the hunt !