3 Enzyme Kinetics

3.1 Introduction

Assaying Enzymes

To study an enzyme, an assay is necessary. The assay is a measurement of a chemical reaction, which might involve measuring the formation of the product. For example, b-galactosidase catalyzes the following reaction:

	             b-galactosidase
	lactose  ----------------------->  glucose  +  galactose

For this reaction, measuring the formation of glucose would constitute an assay. Because this is technically difficult, an easier way to follow the reacti