Effects of internal diffusion on the lineweaver‐Burk plots for immobilized enzymes

Abstract

Abstract The effect of internal diffusion on the slope and the intercept of the LineweaverBurk plots for the immobilized enzyme was considered theoretically and it was found that the slope and the intercept are influenced not only by the dimensionless term M but also by the range of the dimensionless bulk substrate concentration ζ b . The dependencies of the slope and the intercept on M and on the rate of ζ b are shown graphically. Accurate estimations of M and the maximum velocity of the immobilized enzyme give the true, not apparent, Michaelis constant. It is shown that the linear correlations in the Lineweaver‐Burk plots do not always coincide with the correlations for the estimation of M and the maximum velocity. It also is shown that large values of M may induce a serious error in the estimation of M with large values of ζ b and in an estimation of the maximum velocity with small values of ζ b .