Useful Materials for Chapter 6

Click here for a link to an enzyme animation. It allows you to mess around with the various factors that can impact the rate at which reactants become products. It is a rather simplified animation, as you can't choose between noncompetitive inhibition or competitive inhibition and such. However, you can change the number of enzymes, substrates, and inhibitors that you choose to be present. You can then see how long it takes for all the substrates to become enzymes. Enzymes are shown in green, substrates are blue, products are red, and inhibitors are yellow. You can grasp the basic concepts of enzyme functioning rates and inhibition using this. For example, you could choose for there to be only one enzyme, 10 substrates, and and 20 inhibitors in your setup. It would take a long time for a significant number of products to be formed. Next, you could raise the number of substrates to 60 and notice that although the inhibitors do slow down the product formation rate, it is overcome by the sheer number of substrates present.


If you are having a tough time understanding the thermodynamics of metabolism, I suggest you click here. It's just an article, and I know articles are boring! But this is written by a chemistry professor and she does a pretty good job of explaining endergonic reactions, exergonic reactions, coupling of reactions, and whatnot. So, if the book is just not doing it for you, check this article out. If for nothing else, then do it because she included this picture (see below) in her article.