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Law of Mass Action
Law of Mass Action
Elio Espejo
The law of mass action (LMA) states that the rate of molecular
collisions of two chemical species in a dilute gas or solution is proportional
to the product of the two concentrations.
One of the most basic enzymatic reactions, …rst proposed by Michaelis and
Menten (1913), involves a substrate S reacting with an enzyme E to form
a complex SE with in turn is converted into a product P and the enzyme.
We represent this schematically by
k1 k
S +E SE !2 E + P.
k 1
s = [S ] , e = [E ], c = [SE ], p = [P ]
dp
We also get from dt = k2 c,
dp s (t )
= k2 e0 .
dt s ( t ) + Km
Often enough, enzymes possess more than one binding site. Di¤erent
binding sites may interact: if one site is occupied, the conformation of the
enzyme changes and therewith also the a¢ nity of the enzyme.