BRAINCAKEEffect of Substrate Concentration
When enzyme concentration and all other conditions are kept constant, changing the substrate concentration gives a characteristic curve.
At low substrate concentrations, increasing substrate concentration increases the rate. There are more substrate molecules, so there are more successful collisions with active sites and more enzyme-substrate complexes form per second. Many active sites are empty, so substrate concentration is the limiting factor. In this region the rate is roughly directly proportional to substrate concentration.
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Key terms in this lesson
- limiting factor
- A factor that, when in shortest supply, directly controls the rate of a process, even if other factors are increased.
- vmax
- The maximum rate of an enzyme-catalysed reaction, reached when all the active sites present are saturated with substrate.
More in Enzymes
- Biological Catalysts
- Lock and Key Hypothesis
- Induced Fit Hypothesis
- Measuring Rate of Reaction
- Effect of Temperature
- Effect of pH
- Effect of Enzyme Concentration
- Reversible and Irreversible Inhibition
All 14 lessons in Enzymes · All Edexcel AS-level Biology topics