Problem Formation of active reverse transcriptase dimers

Problem Formation of active reverse transcriptase dimers 

Here is another example of a second order reaction in which both reaction partners are the same chemical compound. 

The protein reverse transcriptase (RT) is a viral protein essential for the propagation of retroviruses like HIV. RT is initially produced in the cell as a monomer , but quickly forms a homo-dimer , which is a complex of two RT-monomers. Only this homo-dimer is active, whereas RT monomers are not. Obviously there is a huge interest to find a potent drug against HIV and this can be done by investigating the kinetics of RT dimer formation. If one could stop the formation of RT-dimers then ftie virus could no longer replicate. To study the formation of RT dimers you use a concentration of 200 nM RT monomers and measure their concentration at certain time intervals  

To find out what order this reaction is we start by assuming that this is a zero order reaction. In this case we just plot concentration of the RT monomer versus time and check whether this gives a straight line  

Obviously this doesn t give a straight line, therefore let s try a first order reaction. In this case we have to calculate In (concentration of the RT monomer) and plot it versus time  

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