Significance of the michaelis constant

Abstract

THE Michaelis-Menten1 equation relating initial velocity of a simple enzyme-catalysed reaction to initial substrate concentration is: where ν is the initial velocity of reaction, e is the initial enzyme concentration, s is the initial substrate concentration, k3 is the velocity constant of the breakdown of the enzyme-substrate compound into enzyme and product of the catalysed reaction and K is the substrate concentration at which ν is half-maximal. © 1963 Nature Publishing Group.