Stopped-flow methods, transient-state kinetic

Transient-state kinetic analysis is most commoifly based upon stopped-flow methods where an optical signal is used to follow the time dependence of a reaction however, it is often difficult or impossible to rigorously interpret the optical signal. For example, if the absolute extinction coefficients and concentrations of species contributing to the optical signal are not known, then the reaction pathway cannot be determined unambiguously. Some fast reactions do not result... 

Perhaps the most difficult aspect of learning transient-state kinetic methods is that it is not possible to lay down a prescribed set of experiments to be performed in a given sequence to solve any mechanism. Rather, the sequence of experiments will be dictated by the details of the enzyme pathway, the relative rates of sequential steps, and the availability of signals for measurement of rates of reaction. The latter constraint applies mainly to stopped-flow methods, and less so for chemical-quench-flow methods provided that radiolabeled substrates can be synthesized. Therefore, 1 will describe the kinetic methods used to establish an enzyme reaction mechanism with emphasis on the direct measurement of the chemical reactions by rapid quenching methods. Stopped-flow methods are useful in instances in which optical signals provide an easy means to measure the rates of individual steps of the reaction. 

Continuous transient-state kinetic methods (stopped-flow assays) 361... 

The steady state and stopped-flow kinetic studies on the horse liver enzyme are now considered classic experiments. They have shown that the oxidation of alcohols is an ordered mechanism, with the coenzyme binding first and the dissociation of the enzyme-NADH complex being rate-determining.15,26,27 Both the transient state and steady state methods have detected that the initially formed enzyme-NAD+ complex isomerizes to a second complex 27,28 In the reverse reaction, the reduction of aromatic aldehydes involves rate-determining dissociation of the enzyme-alcohol complex,27,29 whereas the reduction of acetaldehyde is... 

Fortunately, the characteristic absorbance of certain stable and transient enzyme species and, in some instances, of products, together with the fact that the two half-reactions can be studied separately, permits informative rapid kinetic measurements of the overall and partial reactions of flavoprotein oxidases. Stopped-flow spectrophotometric methods (26) have been particularly useful (the irreversibility of the partial and overall reactions rules out relaxation methods) because the measured rate constants often correspond in part or whole to the reciprocals of the steady state coefficients. This is the major reason for using the formulation... 

Transient-kinetic techniques most often rely on the rapid mixing of reactants with enzyme to initiate the reaction. This mixing is essential so that all enzyme molecules start reaction in synchrony with one another therefore, the time dependence of the observable reactions dehnes the kinetics of interconversion of enzyme intermediate states. Because mixing requires a hnite amount of time, conventional methods are limited in their ability to measure very fast reactions. For example, a typical value for the dead time of a stopped-flow instrument is approximately 1 ms, which is because of the time it takes to hll the observation cell. Thus, reactions with a half-life of less than 1 ms (rate > 700 s ) are difficult to observe depending on the signal to noise... 

The pH dependence of kinetics of DHODs has been studied both by steady-state and transient methods. By watching flavin reduction directly in anaerobic stopped-flow experiments, a of 8.3 controlling reduction was observed for the Class lA DHOD from L. lactis while in the Class 2 enzymes from humans and... 

So far, examples to illustrate experimental methods for following the time course of the approach to steady states and of their kinetic interpretation have been restricted to enzymes which do not have a natural chromophore attached to the protein although reference has been made to the classic studies of Chance with peroxidase (see p. 142). Qearly the application of these techniques to the study of enzymes with built in chromophores, such as the prosthetic groups riboflavine, pyridoxal phosphate or haem, contributed considerably to the elucidation of reaction mechanisms. However, the progress in the identification of the number and character of intermediates depended more on the improvements of spectral resolution of stopped-flow equipment than on any kinetic principles additional to those enunciated above. This is illustrated, for instance, by the progress made between the first transient kinetic study of the flavoprotein xanthine oxidase by Gutfreund Sturtevant (1959) and the much more detailed spectral analysis of intermediates by Olson et al. (1974) and Porras, Olson Palmer (1981). 

The steady-state and rapid equilibrium kinetics do not give detailed information on the existence of multiple intermediates or on their lifetimes. Such information is provided by fast (or transient) kinetics. The methods can be divided in two categories rapid-mixing techniques (stopped-flow, rapid-scanning stopped-flow, quenched flow) which operate in a millisecond time scale and relaxation techniques (temperature jump, pressure jump) which monitor a transient reaction in a microsecond time scale. Most of the transient kinetic methods rely on spectrophotomet-rically observable substrate changes during the course of enzyme catalysis. 

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