James' Unwanted Blood Clots

 

The antithrombin III test measures how well James' plasma inhibits thrombin.
This part of the tutorial illustrates aspects of enzyme kinetics.

 

Reducing the substrate concentration to 90mM from 180mM would result in very little change in the reaction rate.

            In the antithrombin III assay, thrombin catalyzes the reaction:

H-D-HHT-L-Ala-L-Arg-pNA (colorless) → H-D-HHT-L-Ala-L-Arg + pNA (colored)

            For this substrate, thrombin has Km=3.24 μM

The recommended substrate concentration is 55 times higher than the Km (180μM/3.24μM), so the enzyme will be nearly saturated with substrate even if the substrate concentration is cut in half.

If you wish, you can use the Michaelis-Menten equation to come up with a quantitative answer to the question.

      Quantitative answer:
            Vi=Vmax[S]/(Km+[S]).
            At 180 μM substrate Vi is 98% of Vmax.
            At 90μM substrate Vi is 96.5% of Vmax.
            Consequently, the reduction in substrate concentration will only cause about a 2% decrease in Vi.

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