Qualitative Detection of Template Effects

In general, product distribution analysis is only used to provide qualitative evidence for template effects. In the next section, we will discuss the parameters which are important in the quantification of template effects and show how choice of concentration regime can be used to optimize the effectiveness of a template. 

Kinetic templates accelerate reaction of bound substrates, which makes it tempting to quantify template effects in terms of rate enhancement . In this section, we will show how this can be misleading because such rate enhancements are concentration dependent. We will elucidate the parameters which determine the rate enhancement achieved with a kinetic template, by analyzing the thermodynamic and kinetic behavior of simple theoretical models, and applying these models to published template systems. Our theoretical models are similar to the Michaelis-Menten analysis of enzyme catalyzed reactions [51], except that we assume there is no catalytic turnover. First, we consider linear templates, then cyclization templates. In general, the rate of reaction varies as the reaction proceeds whenever we refer to rates in the following discussion, we mean initial rates. 

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